Transcripts
1. Introduction: Animation is the ability
to breathe life into an object or character to make it not only
physically real, but to give it a unique and
believable personality. Hello, my name is Brian dark. I'm an animator and
animation director with about 30 years
professional experience. I've worked on
feature films, games, TV shows, commercials for D rides and
educational software. I've been working overseas
for the past four years. And while there, I
was asked to create a course that would
get people who had 0 animation experience up and running for
shows and under a year. It was also for an
ESL working groups. So the language had to be
simple, clear, and logical. This is the course I made. If you are looking
for a full course from a to Z, then this is it. If you are looking
for the logic and reasons behind the action is, then this is for you. It might be a bit different
than you're used to online. I'm not going to be
doing the work for you. This is lecture-based, so
you have the tools and the understanding on how you can check point your
work as you go, not just copy
someone else's work. There are two parts. A beginner basic section that deals with physics
on simple object, which this is a part of. And a second section
which deals with using those lessons
on a full body rate. Always thinking about
how to put personality into those actions to
create believable acting. I'm uploading the beginner
sections first since it's been edited to
remove the translations. This is an actual course. This is not just a group of flashy TikTok style
five-minute feel-good videos. If you use the information
here and practice, you will have the
skills to get a job. The software you use
can be anything. And for most of the basic part, you will just be using
a sphere or a cube. We're getting a little
bit more advanced. There are a ton of free rigs out there for you to play with. At the end of each lesson, there are two assignments. One is an animation assignment
based on the lecture. Two is a pose of some kind with a full
body rig or facial rig. I don't teach the software. I teach some mental process
that creates movement. The whole first
section is 2D based, meaning you will not
be using a 3D camera. I want you to understand
the logic behind the movement and use your eye to see what is working and why. So let's get started
with the bouncing ball.
2. Why The Bouncing Ball: If you want to learn to animate, you have to start off
with the bouncing ball. It's a simple shape. And a simple shape allows
you to make corrections very easy and allows you to
improve very quickly. There's a reason why every animation book starts
off with a bouncing ball. All the animation that
you've seen in movies, Kung Fu Panda,
Incredibles, ice age. All of those movies, those animators, they started off with something
really, really simple. They didn't just jump in to
animating Kung fu scenes. They worked on
very simple shapes and they develop
their skills slowly. It looks really simple, but there's a lot
going on in there. For a basic animator. For beginning animator,
their goal is to try and make the ball
have the correct physics. So all of the
physical attributes of the ball work perfectly. It looks like a real ball
for an advanced animator. Their job is to try and
give it more personality. They have the physics down, so now they want to
add a little bit more character to it. So there's something for
everybody in the bouncing ball. Each time. And advanced animator works on the bouncing ball, they try something different. They're moving keys
here, moving keys, they're trying to get a
different feel to it. They experiment. Experimentation
is how we learn, that's how we grow. Most people think
that starting off with a full rigged
character or something with hands and fingers and face and everything
is the way to go. They think that I am
going to animate, I'm animating Kung Fu Panda, or I'm animating Mr. Incredible doing a fight
scene or something. They always want to jump in and have some character moving
around and giving it life without actually
learning the process. So they know how to animate
that character properly. You're over complicating
things way too quickly. Start with something simple. Doctors first surgery is not
a heart transplant, right? So the doctor has to
build up to that. He goes to school,
goes to classes, practices on little animals, and builds their way up. Animation is exactly
the same way. Animation is a learned skill. It takes time and practice
to develop those skills. You can't just jump right in or your stuff is never
gonna look correct. When you jump into using
a full rigged character, every single pose
is going to take like 30 minutes to
get into position. With a ball. You
have two controls, you have the y control and you have the x to start off with. Then later you will start using the Z because you're gonna
be doing stuff in 3D. But even with adding in rotation
and squash and stretch, that still gives you a
maximum of seven controls. Now, if you look at the
fully rigged character, you got minimum of like ten
in just one of the hands. It's pretty easy to see which
one is a good choice for learning and which
one is a good choice for correcting mistakes quickly. So stick with the
simple shape for now. And then as you advance, it'll get more complex, believe me, get complex quickly. Thing about the bouncing ball is it's really easy to learn on. It's got only a few controls. So you can play with
it really quickly. And you can learn most
of the lessons that you need to learn using
the bouncing ball. You have a ton of lessons,
as you can see here. The only thing that
you really can't do with a bouncing ball is overlap and lip-sync
and walk cycles really. Everything else. All those basics that
you're going to build on are coming from
the bouncing ball.
3. What Books You Should Get: Here's some different
examples of what you can do with
a bouncing ball. The different ways that
people will set their keys. These are styled after the ones that I've
seen in other books. So there's three major
books that you should get. If you don't have these, you should get them, and you
should get them right away. The first one is the Disney
book, illusion of life. They give you two
examples in that book. One with squash and
stretch and one without. And thing is about
the Disney book. It's more designed for
the whole picture. It gives you
everything from doing storyboards all the way
up to a finished product. And it tells you
how awesome Disney is and they show you lots
of beautiful pictures. So if you're looking for
a complete overview of animated movies than
the Disney book is definitely a way to go and it's a good book
as a resource for getting some of the
history of how all of that came about and
what the ideas were behind a lot of the process
for the Disney movies. Disney set the standard
for animation. They had the old men that Disney old man that put together the basic rules for animating the 12 principles of animation. They were the founders of all of the animated
films that we see today. The two big influences, of course, we're Disney
and Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers was a more
cartoony aspect of it and Disney did more of the
feature film side of it. The second book that you should get is the Preston Blair book. Now the Preston Blair book is The books that people
my age grew up on. Preston Blair put everything
into a very simple format. He said, Here's a keyframe,
Here's a keyframe, Here's a keyframe
and he showed you the actual process of animating, doing walk cycles, run, even doing like
sneaks and things. He put all of those
into his book and he showed you key by key by
key in even nowadays, people take those keyframes from his book and try
to show them to us as, Hey, look, I did a walk cycle. Well, if you copy his frames, it's not you doing
the walk cycle, you're just copying
his walk cycle. Preston Blair was an animator, which means that every time
he animated character, he didn't take those keys and put them into his
character and say, Okay, here's my walk cycle,
Here's my run cycle. I made a double bounce. It's the perfect double bounce
and I'm not changing it. He would come up with a new
way of doing it each time, slightly different based on what the character needed
at that time. So when you take
something from somebody else and you don't modify it, you don't learn from it. You're wasting your time. Each time you do something, you should experiment
and try something new. Now, the Richard
Williams book is, or should be on every
animators desk somewhere. When you walk around
normally you'll see half the animators in the studio haven't even opened
on their desk. The problem is that
a lot of people take the Richard
Williams book the same way they would take
the Preston Blair book. Richard Williams was focusing
much more on experimenting. He's trying to teach
you how to experiment. Preston Blair was
showing you a key-frame, key-frame, key-frame copy me and you'll have a good start. Whereas Richard Williams is
showing you modifications. He says, here's a
simple walk cycle. Now, if we alter the timing
on the hand or the wrist, then we get this. If we alter the high frame and the low frame, then we get this. If we move these things
the opposite way, we get this weird motion. So he's teaching you
how to experiment and showing you what
the results are. His book is very, very helpful for animators if you actually
read the material. Experimentation and practice
is where you learn. You should never be
afraid of experimenting. You can save your file and
do something different. And if it doesn't
work, pull back, you should never settle
with just a good product. If it's good, it's not great. So you want to push it and
push it until it breaks. After it breaks, then you can
pull it back and you say, okay, this is the
best that I can do. It's the most clear
read that I can have. Now, if you do not have
these three books, you should go online
right now and buy them because they are extremely important for your
animation career. They will help you a ton.
4. Artists Allow For Variations: Now there's no one way to
put a key into position. Richard Williams likes to have a contact frame just
before the impact. So he has this stretched
out contact frame right before the impact
and he likes that. He thinks that that gives it
an extra bit of snap *****. Whereas Preston Blair, he
has the frame coming in, which is a stretch frame. You have the impact
which is a squash, and then he has a
push off at the end. So his style is a little bit different in the book
that he's put out. Now, even having just one
frame of contacts still reads with or without
the squash and stretch. Personally, I prefer to have a squashed frame as my
first contact frame. So I have the stretch frame, then I have a squashed
frame as my contact, and then I have a solid shape that shows the actual
true shape of the object before it bounces off
the ground that we get this little glimpse of the actual object
before it's gone. Of course I change those
based on what I'm animating. So just as a default, when I'm going in and I'm
doing a bouncing ball, I have it set up that way. That's the way I like to do it. But then of course, if it's not the
feeling that I want, I'll go in and I'll
change things. I'll make more squash
frames, less squash range, change the shape a little bit, make it push off a little bit more each time it's
something different. It's not about those keyframes. It's about how it ends up
feeling to the audience. Because the audience isn't
looking at a keyframe. What they're looking
at is a feeling. They want to have
that right feeling. Now all these choices, all these different
ways of doing the bouncing ball
or user discretion. I mean, everyone can have their own little method
of making a ball bounce as long as
the physics are there, then it's believable. You had the personality
on top of it. Each animator has their own
little way that they do it. There's no right way to make a ball look the way
you want it to look. It's just how it feels. The end result is always,
is it believable? Does it have the
personality you want?
5. Timing and Spacing: Okay, timing and spacing. How you put your
keys in your file, where you place your object in the scene and determines
how it moves. So those things are always
done with timing and spacing. Spacing is the distance that something travels
from frame to frame. So if I have a frame here, then I have a frame here, then I have a frame here, then the object is going to
be moving fairly slow. If I have a frame here
and then a frame here, then the object is going
to be moving really fast. So further apart is fast, closer together is slow. Now looking at this first image, you see all the frames
are evenly spaced. This means it's moving
at a constant speed. When you start to change the
distances between the keys, it creates a texture. It gives the object
acceleration and deceleration. Timing is what gives a shot. Its personality. Comedy, acting, and investments
are all about timing. So think about timing as the
music your scene plays too. When you listen to music,
there are many parts to it. There are fills, verse, the bridge, chorus, refrain, solos, and then there's how the song ends and how the song begins all play an
important part in the song. It's all mixed together with those little pieces trying
to tell the same story. This is timing. When you're planning
out your shots. It doesn't matter
if it's a leaf, it's a person or it's
just a little ball. All of your shots should be
animated with the same care. Even timing is the hallmark
of beginners work. They're so caught up in this
belief that there should be a key every three frames
or every five frames. And then what they
end up with is this robotic motion that really looks wrong
in their shots. Things do not move in
a steady beat, right? They're all mixed
together. You have holds, you have fast action,
slow actions. And you mix those together
to bring your character to life and to make it
interesting for the viewer. You fool me ever tell him, well, almost every time,
well, once or twice. Here's a good example
from one of my students. Although the words are repeating the timing between the
words and the poses or not, she picked a good dialogue to animate two and did a decent job of being creative with her timing and her
poses once or twice. So timing is the beats that
you play, your animation to. Look at the orange dots,
the contact frames. If they were evenly
spaced in time than it would be a
steady repeating beat, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. But you can see that they are getting closer and
closer together. So we get an
acceleration in timing. Whenever you're reviewing
your animation, whenever you're watching
it play on your screen, you should be counting
beats for your major keys, looking at stuff saying, okay, the guy is grabbing this, he's looking right, he's
dropping down, he's looking up. Alright, if all of those
are on the same beat than your animation needs
to be changed. It's boring. You don't want bom, bom, bom, bom like that. Well, you want as I bump, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, something like
that where it breaks up all the timing and it makes it more interesting
for people watching it.
6. Acceleration Deceleration: Now let's look at how spacing works with acceleration
and deceleration. You can see with acceleration, the keys are spaced further
and further apart as they go. Remembering that the
larger your spacing, the greater the speed. With deceleration, the keys get closer and closer until
there's no movement. With basic acceleration
and deceleration, making something look realistic. Computers can do that. We see it all the time with particle effects
where it has a bunch of building crumbling and down. The animators don't key every single object
inside that frame. Most of it is done with
a simulation software. And you can do a bouncing ball
with simulation software, it's not very difficult. The goal here is not to actually do a bouncing ball
that looks real, but it's to study how to make those pieces and
parts work correctly. It's how to understand
acceleration and deceleration. With these, you're
going to move on to a complex character and use
those same thought processes. That same thing that you
train your eye to see. You can now use with
the complex character and you won't have to sit
there and think about it. It'll be second nature
because you've done it so many times with
just a simple ball. Also. Something else that you're
training your eye to see is my markers Here we go. Also something that you're
training your eye to see is smooth motion. Obviously, a computer
can just don't, don't, don't, don't don't
go and do it really nicely. Well, what you're trying to
do is you're trying to get your motion to follow a
nice path that smooth. You don't want this to be up here because then you get
this little pop that goes on. This is a problem. This is why you're
using your eye to do these things and not
the Curve Editor. And this is why you are doing
it now with a simple ball, because when you do
it with the hand, it's going to be a
lot more complicated. Also, your acceleration
and deceleration has the same problems. So you'd have the ball
here, here, here, here, where it's gradually getting further and further
apart each time. Nicely, not where you
have two that are close together and then these two are evenly spaced and
then this one's here. This is not a simple
acceleration. This is two that are very close, so it's moving
slow then all of a sudden is this fast jump. And then this is actually
smaller than that. So you have the slowdown, then you have this
huge acceleration. This is wrong. This is not what
we're looking for, where you're gonna be practicing
is this type of thing. So you always have these nice smooth accelerations
and decelerations. The only time you would
get something like this is when you're purposely trying to get a
shake in the character. Like if he's rubbing against the board or against
the ground or dirt or something
and you're trying to get it all a
little bit more edgy. So you would do
this type of thing, you'd be, you'd
add that in later. Right now, concentrate on trying to get these
smooth actions. Right, to get you started, we're just going to start
off with up and down. We're not going to be doing
left and right for now, we're just using one controller. Then this way you will learn how to get those nice
smooth motions. And will we be using gravity
as our only control? So gravity drops down,
makes things accelerate. Now, physics are going to play a huge part in the whole
first part of these lessons. You're going to be
learning how to make things move physically. After you learn how to make
things move physically, then you can put
acting on top of it. And that's the way it should be. You don't have a bad foundation and then put a
beautiful house on it. It will all fall apart. Gravity pulls things down. So an object falling will
gain energy and gain speed from a downward movement because gravity is pulling
it in that direction. If we look at this
as animated frames, the spacing of the keys are
further and further apart. Now when an object is moving
upward fighting gravity, so the energy and the
speed are drained away. The downward force of gravity causes a vertical deceleration. At some point, an
object will read 0 energy and it will stop moving before changing direction and accelerating back down
in line with gravity. The objects that we're going
to start off animating or inanimate objects or
objects that are not alive. A living thing can continue
to move over and over again. It can run, it eats
food to get its energy. Whereas a ball or other
inanimate object or rock, they get borrowed
energy, you throw it. So it has borrowed energy and
that energy gets used up. We're going to be using
inanimate objects to start with. When a ball bounces
off the ground, it's now moving up. So it's fighting gravity and is using up energy that it
gained during the fall. In short, down. Plus gravity equals
a positive effect, up plus gravity equals a
negative effect on the object. With every movement there
is resistance in the air, it's wind resistance,
and birds use it to fly. They push against that
wind to move themselves. Whereas fish, they have
water resistance and they move through the water
by pushing against that, by having that water resist against their tail is what
makes them move forward. So right now we'll just be
focusing on when resistance, every object has a
different amount of resistance based
on its shape. And arrow falling down is going to have a lot less
resistance than say, a piece of paper, which is going to have a
larger surface area. So as long as gravity is a stronger force on the object than the resistance
of the object, then it's going to accelerate. You're going to have
this happening to it. It's going to get
faster and faster. But once the resistance is
equal to gravity's pull, the object will have what is
called terminal velocity, which means the object
will no longer accelerate, it will continue to
fall at a steady rate. So when you have an
object that falls out, say a little guy, he's got his arms up like this
and he's falling. You're not going to
have him start off like this and then at the
end have these huge, big gaps where he's just
constantly accelerating. He's not a rocket, There's
no propulsion on him. So there will be a point
where he's continuing to fall at the same
rate the whole time. Now of course, if he
changes the shape and you've seen that
in a lot of films, especially like the
James Bond films, where a guy is flowing
out of the air and then he talks into this tight shape
and Rubin's himself down and then redrawn
accelerates really quickly. What he's accelerating
because he took his surface area where there has the resistance
and he collapsed it. So there's a lot less surface, lot less resistance so
he can travel faster. So then it accelerates.
7. How Movement Works: All right. We talked about placement, where you're placing your keys. And here are some
simple rules to follow when you're placing your keys
for your in and out frames, you're in and out frame
should never match. Okay, So in this image here, you'll see that T3
is you're in-frame. Key for is your contact frame and key fries is your out frame. Now 35 and the image on
the left are not equal. This is the way you
should have it. If you have your frames
are at the same position, then nobody's going to
notice the contact frame. It will appear as
if it's not moving. What you'll get is you'll
get this little flash. So you have this and
you have something down here, and then
you have this again, then you end up with
boom, boom, boom, right? And nobody notices this
going on down here. What they notice is
this going twice. All right. So if this then this, then this then you
get this type of motion and it gives
you a better feel. I personally preferred
to have your in-frame, you're out frame and then sorry, in framing your contact frame, and then you're out frame
being a little higher, so you get this motion. So it actually gives it a
feeling that it's moving up rather than staying
in the same position. Now the reason that
animation works is because your eye is actually hold onto the image that you
see for just a split second. So if you keep your eyes closed, you open them and close
them really quickly, then you'll still see what was in the room for just a
little fraction of a Saxon. Second, little
fraction of a second. So in animation, we show you a frame and we take that frame away and we show
you another frame. So we show you this frame. Then we showed you that
frame and it looks like the object is
actually moving. Now, if your objects
are too far apart. So if I have frame here, and then we get rid of
that and we draw it here. Then it goes up and
your eye sees that as it's moving one space over. Now, if I have the object here and then the next thing I know I have an object over here. Because of all this other stuff, this objects just going to
look like it disappeared. Okay, now if I don't have
all of this stuff over here, so if I have an object here and then it
just pops over here. Again, it's a
really far distance we didn't build up to that. We didn't give the viewer
something that they can use to connect those. So if we have something here, then something there than
we already give the viewer the idea that this object is
moving from here to here. Then when we place
this over here, they're looking in this area somewhere to find that object. So there I jumped to it. So we're leading them
into that position. Now people found that
12 frames a second, or images per second, is the smallest amount of frames per second
that the brain can handle and still make smooth animation anything
slower than that. And you notice the frames. It still looks like it's moving. But each frame is noticeable. Like when you're
looking at Christmas lights and you see the frame, the light goes on here and
the light goes on here. We're seeing it strobe
back and forth. Our eye perceives motion, but it looks really choppy. It's not something
that's really smooth. 12 frames a second is
about as few frames you can do per second and
still have a smooth motion. Warner Brothers worked with
12 frames a second for years, and it was mainly because
of economic reasons. They didn't have time to
draw out all those frames, pay the animators for that, and then they're
putting everything on those acetate cells. It's a lot more work
to paint up into ink. So doing 12 frames a second, you still got nice
smooth motions. So we're going to work at 12
frames a second for starting off because I want you animating every single frame.
There's no curve editor. You're not letting somebody else do the in-betweens for you, doing every single frame. So starting off is gonna be 12 frames a second
in your files. Now the end frames
and the frames are involved in any
direction change. It doesn't matter if
it's a sharp contact or it's the top part of the arc. So there are soft
direction changes and there are sharp
direction changes, things where it hits, it's influenced by
an outside source. Okay, so the same rules apply for doing your end
frames and you're out frames through that peak. You don't want to have
these sharp points. Never make your in and
out frames on a peak, a sharp point round
those peaks out. This goes for any direction
change sharp or subtle. Avoid the triangle shape
as much as possible, or it's going to
look like a pop. Even on your final balances, like the very final time that
the ball is bouncing out, should try to avoid having
it as just one frame, maybe like the last
one or last two. You can do that one frame,
one frame, one frame. But before that
you want to always have just a little bit
around this to it. So it gives it a
much nicer feeling.
8. Hang Time: The peak or the top part of
the arc is called hang time. Now, hang time is mostly
known in basketball, where the player jumps to make a shot and it seems to just float endlessly
in the air before doing some fancy
throw with the ball. The hang time area is where
the object has 0 weight. It's where deceleration
changes to acceleration. When throwing a
ball straight up, it's easier to see
the 0 gravity area. The area at the top of the
arc is the hang time area. When we draw the jump, the hang time is where
the legs change from jumping to landing and where
the throw is actually made. The mistake people make, is that real hank
time is an illusion. In basketball. The player stretches
his body at the top of the arc so that his
head seems to remain in the same height for a
longer period of time than normal person making
a standard jump. So this gives the illusion
that the star player is defying gravity
and floating like Superman to make
this awesome shot. The average time in the air for professional basketball
player is 0.9 seconds. And it's actually impossible by laws of physics for a human to stay in the air
for more than 1 second. Notice in this breakdown, the center mass path is
a simple smooth arc, just like a bouncing ball. The green line in the
path is the head. And again, it's a smooth path. The area in green is
the hang time area. The area outside of that
is where the object has a greater force and weight. Think about this. If
you take a bowling ball and you place it on your
friends stomach, right? Or if he's laying on
the ground and you drop it from two meters now, which is going to hurt more. The ball because of its speed, has a greater force
when it hits. Controlling all of this
through your spacing and your timing gives your ball
endless possibilities. Alright, this is
obvious in films when handled by professional
animators. Films like Kung Fu Panda, where Pandas
training and he gets kicked out of the doors
and he's falling down these endless stairs and
they're laughing at them. They have these little
poses at the top of the arcs where he's, I guess he's coming
from the right, like this and he's
bouncing down. And you've got
these little shapes of the panda at the
top of the arc. Whereas heads here and his
arms are out like this. So there are holding
these spots, not the impact right there holding the
top part of the arc. So he's like boom, and
they show you oppose boom. They show you another pose, boat and they show
you another pose. So you're showing his
helplessness as the bone, bone, Bone falls down. It gives you a small view of these little funny
poses that he's doing. Also scrapped in the film Ice
Age at the very beginning, where scratch pulling out the
acorn and he goes sliding down the ice and then
they'll suddenly hits dirt and he stops and then bop, bop, bop, bop, and then he
gets stepped on by a mammoth. Those bounces have
the same feel to it. They have these
really hard impacts and then oppose in the air to show his helplessness and to give you a
cute pose each time. So they're altering their keys, you're altering their
spacing and their timing to give you a unique feel, a harder hit or haze
cute in that pose. In this also shows you how
they go about making a bounce. Have personality. We will be adding
personality later on. For now, just do a simple
bouncing ball and practice clean accelerations
and decelerations and soft and sharp
direction changes.
9. Assignment: Every week you're going
to have a new assignment. And I don't want you to just jump into the computer
and start working on it. You need to prepare, need to plan ahead. Alright, and the
best way to plan ahead is through thumbnails. Whenever you open your file, you should have a
clear direction of where you want to go. You don't just jump into
a car and start driving. You have an idea where you wanna go before you get in the car. You might try a different
way of getting there. You might try a shortcut because
of traffic or something, but you know where
you want to go. Let's just jump in
the car, turned the key on it, just drive away. Animation is the same way. When you go in your file, you have a clear plan of
what you're going to do. If you do that before
you start animating, you will animate a lot faster
and your work will improve. Now thumbnailing is the
best way to quickly figure out things
before getting lost. Try out different poses. Get those attitudes to show quickly and easily
to the viewer. Make most of your mistakes here where they can
be quickly corrected. Quick drawings and
simple shapes help you plan your animation quickly. Doing this on paper
as much faster than posing a 3D character
as we looked at before. The benefit of this will
become more and more clear when you're
doing full characters. But I want you to get into the
habit of thumbnailing now. So even with these
simple actions, I want you to practice
thumbnailing. We're also going to be doing
posing on a regular basis. So get you used to the rig. The first pose is
going to be balanced. So balance is where all of your contact frames are
supporting the center of mass. Now there can be
two contact points, three, there can be eight
if he's lying down. Alright? But in all cases
there's going to be support for that body. So if I'm leaning against
this wall like this, then my body is supported
by my two feet and my hand. If we remove my hand away
from the wall, I fall down. You're gonna be working
with balance a lot. You should always know where your character's balance
is and where it's going, how his weight is shifting
and where it shifting to. These are very important for giving some action
and movement to your, to your, to your poses
and to your keyframes. So if your keyframes have
that nice motion in there, then your animation is also going to have
that nice motion. Unless falling your
characters should always be shifting from one balanced
position to another. Regularly posing the
character will increase your familiarity with
the complex rig, improve your poses and help you master balance and
movement in your work. The assignment for today is a simple bouncing ball with a loop just continuing
to balance. You're going to be
practicing your acceleration or deceleration. You're going to be practicing your spacing and your timing. You're not using the Curve
Editor for doing your work. You can look at the curve
editor when you're done to check your work to
make sure that your, your why Tran looks nice. But I don't want you
using the Curve Editor when you're actually
doing your work. I want you to train your eye to get better so you can see
when there's a problem, not open up a file and have the computer tell you
when there's a problem. It's very simple
with a one ball, with one channel to see
how that arc is moving. But when your body
is moving around the body shaking like
this and the handshaking, it's really difficult
to make that hand look clear just by
using the curve editor. You have to use your eye
for complex characters. You're training your eye here. Now we're gonna
be working in 2D. So you're gonna be
using the ortho camera, which is a flat camera. You're not gonna be
using the 3D view. We're only animating in 2D. So you're going to have
one control right now, which is your y Tran. Later on we'll add x so you can move your
character left and right. But we don't want to
be doing anything in z for now, right? No rotations either. Alright, no squash and stretch. Just a simple bouncing
ball going up and down. At 12 frames a second.
Brian Dowrick
