bouncing balls project

This project continues to look at timing and motion but also introduces squash and stretch to give a better expression of emotion and character to an object. We used the program Maya which alloys you to create key frames and will animate the movement in-between, you can still create each frame yourself if you wish but there is no need to most of the time. The subject of our work was a sphere and the initial work was creating movement similar the falling blocks project then further developing it. We were introduced to the 3 parts of a movement, the initial pause to build up apprehension for the upcoming action, the action or movement, and then the recover or post action afterwards. For a jumping ball the was a squash a stretch and then another squash. the ball would squash to appear to be preparing for the jump, as it jumped it would stretch to give the impression it is trying to gain height, a smaller squash at the top of the jump similar to a tuck just helps to give more life to the movement and after the ball falls down a squash to recover and compose itself. After the initial jumps we experimented with others incorporating sideways movement and twists and then an interaction. I did encounter problems after introducing sideways movement and had to add key-frames to certain points in order to stop the ball moving at unwanted times. A good thing I found when using this program is that it allows you to study the graphs showing particular axis and certain stretch, movement and rotation of each which can be separately viewed this was extremely beneficial to study for correcting areas within the animations when something was wrong but it was difficult to work out what exactly or how to rectify it.