Bouncy Ball

In this lesson students will use Pencil2D to animate a ball bouncing into the "frame," squashing against the floor/wall and stretching as it bounces away. This lesson focuses on the first principle of animation called squash and stretch. The lesson also explores exaggeration and timing.

Objectives and Guidelines

Students will explore the fundamentals of animation and understand the perception associated with the illusion of movement.
Students will apply the animation principle of squash and stretch to a bouncing ball.
Students will create their own bouncing ball gif.
Students will draw a minimum of 12 frames and your animation should be played back at 12 FPS

Path of Action

The path of action is the trajectory of an object or character, and in this case is the path the ball will follow, made up of arcs. Arcs are often used in animation to move objects and characters because they provide a more dynamic path than just a straight line. It may be helpful to use a separate bitmap layer to keep track of this arc. this layer can be turned off before exporting

Timing

Timing is used in animation to determine actions from beginning to end. In this case, timing is used to locate positions of the ball on the arc as it bounces. As the ball moves down the arc the timing increases, thus the marks are drawn farther apart, and as the ball bounces back up the speed slows down with marks drawn closer together.

Key Poses

The ball starts at the top of the arc as a round circle and as it drops the pace speeds up and the ball exaggerates shape, hence stretching. When it hits the ground it squashes, indicating the illusion of weight and impact. The ball must retain the same volume as it stretches and squashes.

Breakdowns

Breakdowns are the in between drawings that occur before and after the key poses that show speed. After the ball squashes it immediately stretches and this gives the illusion of the ball popping back up into the air. It is important to note here that there is no change in ball shape from stretch to squash to stretch.

In-Betweens

draw the rest of the in-betweens to complete the bouncing ball path of action and smooth out the action. As the ball falls it elongates and stretches, and then after it squashes it changes back into the round shape as it nears the top of the second arc. This creates the effect of the ball slowly moving down and then building momentum back up to another slow down as the ball loses momentum again at the top of the second arc.

Student Examples

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