KS nyiew: 2D Animation

Ball test

Process of making an animation ball

Final outcome of the ainmation

Process of making ball for slow in and slow out

Final outcome for ball slow in slow out

Pendulum ball 1

1. Make a safe guide and a track (layer 2)

2. Create a ball on another layer (layer 3) and follow the number to create a movement path.

3. Click the onion skin button to see all the frames at once.

Result:

Pendulum ball 2

The steps are same with the previous animation. Create a track and a ball. Create the frames and follow the numbers.

Result:

Pendulum ball 3

Result:

Result (without track):

Bouncing ball (without slow in and slow out)

Result:

Result (without track):

Without slow in and slow out, the ball animation looks not smooth enough. Hence, I added slow in and slow out in the next animation by changing the number path.

Bouncing ball (with slow in and slow out)

Result:

Result (without track):

With slow in and slow out, he animation looks smoother compared to the previous animation. However, it still lack of realisticism. This is because I haven't apply the most important principle of an animation, which is "squash and stretch".

Before i show the animation by applying "squash and stretch", i will introduce 12 principles of animation.

12 basic principles of animation

Twelve Basic Principles of Animation were introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation.^[a]^[1] Johnston and Thomas in turn based their book on the work of the leading Disney animators from the 1930s onwards, and their effort to produce more realistic animations. The main purpose of the principles was to produce an illusion of characters adhering to the basic laws of physics, but they also dealt with more abstract issues, such as emotional timing and character appeal.

In order, they consist of:

Squash and stretch
Anticipation
Staging
Straight ahead action and pose-to-pose
Follow through and overlapping action
Ease in, ease out
Arcs
Secondary action
Timing
Exaggeration
Solid drawing
Appeal

The most important principal is squash and stretch, the purpose of which is to give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects. It can be applied to simple objects, like a bouncing ball, or more complex constructions, like the musculature of a human face. Taken to an extreme point, a figure stretched or squashed to an exaggerated degree can have a comical effect. In realistic animation, however, the most important aspect of this principle is the fact that an object's volume does not change when squashed or stretched. If the length of a ball is stretched vertically, its width (in three dimensions, also its depth) needs to contract correspondingly horizontally.

I will put some links down below for further explanation of the principles:

https://idearocketanimation.com/13721-12-principles-of-animation-gifs/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haa7n3UGyDc

Now, i will show the animation with the "Squash and stretch" principle.

Squash and stretch (practice)

Create a path for the ball animation.

By clicking the onion skin button, we will see the frames of the ball with squash and stretch. Ball 7, 8 and 9, their volume are different. When using squash and stretch, it's important to keep the object's volume consistent. So when you stretch something it needs to get thinner, and when you squash something it needs to get wider.

Below is the steps on how to create the balls with squash and stretch.

1. Copy the ball 9 and past it on the same axis.

2. Resize a ball where the width should be wider and the length should be shorter.

3. Click the onion skin button and this is how it should be looked like.

4. Then, move to the ball 8. Copy the same ball on the same axis. Resize it where this time the width should be narrower and the length is longer.

5. For ball 7, copy the ball 7 and ball 8 then paste them on the same axis with ball 7. The size of the ball 7 should be smaller than ball 8 but bigger than original ball.