Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy...

Sara (my Wife) told me about mid-week this week, after my latest epiphony regarding my bouncing ball that I was obsessed. What? No. Not obsessed. Fascinated. I like that word much better. I started the week by making a quickie Flash-based ball bounce, frame to frame with squash and stretch and everything. It was a great learning experience, but it bounced like crap. I then did a lot of reading, took a look at some other people's bouncing balls, made a video of my own, bounced balls anywhere I found them (including my daughter's daycare, where there are an abundance of balls for the bouncing as long as you don't mind being stared at reproachfully by 2 year olds), and watched the AM videos. The epiphony came when I had unsuccessfully animated a few balls, and then I realized I had been going about it all wrong! The clue was in the planning video all along! Layered action! They talk about three approaches to animating. Layered, pose to pose and straight ahead. I didn't really get layered 'til I realized how I could use it in my ball animation! I'd basically been trying to work in pose to pose, keying everything each keyframe, working action across the screen. No, no no! As my daughter is unfortunately learning to say. That totally limited how much tweaking I could do! All wrong! So, I went back to the ole drawing board. Keyed just the movement left to right. Then I keyed just the hit points. Then I keyed just the top of the arc. After doing all that, I was able to tweak the movement, arcs, add or subtract breakdown keys...it opened up the whole thing in the graph editor! Bingo! So, without further adue, my first somewhat successful (or at least a good learning experience) bouncing ball! Remeber, it's supposed to be a basketball.

Click here to view.

I know, it's not sexy or fancy or anything. But I feel like it works. That's good enough for now.