I spent a couple of hrs on my bouncing ball with tail animation. tidying up a bit of timing and a few keys. Also taking on advice that JKR made.
I spent a great deal of time trying to tweak the tail. I'm still not very happy with the way that tail is moving it feels really un-natural and is not moving correctly. The tail on rig works with individual fk controllers part of me wonders whether it would be a lot easier to animate a tail using IK.
I have to admit Although I have learned a lot from animating this bouncing ball I feel that I really should have approached it in a slower way and got everything locked down timing wise in stepped mode and then got all key poses right instead of just rushing a head a bit.
I think I have to many keyframees and am finding it hard to edit timing with so many different keys on differnet things.
I am going to post this video on 11 second club tonight to get some feedback which should be good.
It's coming along! Here are a few things to think about.
ReplyDeleteFrame 63 needs taken out completely. If you cycle between frame 62, 63, and 64 you'll see there's a hesitation slide to the right on 63 that doesn't fit in the movement. That's making your final leap look sluggish and floaty. Taking that frame out should snap thing together well.
On frames 62-65ish the tail should be as straight down as it is on frame 67. That's because it is still playing catchup to the ball, which means it hasn't recovered yet to be coming up. The tip needs pointed down, especially on frame 62. Look at frame 61 and frame 62. Go back and forth between them over and over. The squash is on both the ball AND the tail. You just want it to be on the ball. The tail on 62 should still be on the ground, especially the tip. Does that make sense?
One more thing to consider. When the ball hits the platform on the pole two things should happen. First, the ball should bounce slightly instead of sliding in full contact to the box. You've established the ball is bouncy with the rest of the animation, so when it hits the last "ground" it needs to bounce back up, just a little, as it finishes its landing. Secondly, look at what happens next. When the ball moves to the other side of the platform, the weight of the ball makes the box tip and fall. Wait, rewind a second ago! The ball just hit the OTHER side of the platform on frame 82 with even more force than just its weight! That means when the ball hit on 82, the platform should tip the OTHER direction. Unless it's attached, which clearly it isn't when it falls at frame 98. These little things are what give the whole scene a believability or not; you have to keep it consistent. Now if there were a reason we could see why the platform only fell as the ball came to a stop, that would solve that issue too. Either way if the platform isn't attached, it should be moving more based on where the ball contacts it when it lands.
Good luck with continuing to tweak it. I'm sure it's going to only get better with each pass through you improve! :)
Hey JKR thanks again for a really in depth and lengthy critique of my work I really do appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteGood catch on frame 63 that frame is a bit irrelevant.
Thanks for advice on the tail, Ya I get what you mean. I might need to use the balls tail location a bit more on the stretches because the tail seems to be attached to far up the ball making it look wierd when i stretch it vertically.
Your right about the ball landing on the platform with a bounce especially with the amount of height it had I might try to lower the jump like you mentioned in your other comment and try to make ball approach the platform more horizontally dunno If that would look alright or not? Ill try it tonight.
I think more than anything I just wanted to put a cartoony slide in to show that the ball was alive and trying to slow itself down by pulling back and spinning itself around.
Ya the whole platform falling thing wasnt originally planned and I really should have planned it out better I originally just had ball landing on the platform and that was it but then I decided I wanted to do a cool jump so I made the platform fall but now you've pointed it out it does defy physics a bit and make no sense. I might move platform a bit so ball is landing more in centre to the right side of screen on the landing of jump that way it would make more sense that it is that side that falls.
Ill have to do a lot of mucking around with it.
I've got a long (3 day weekend this weekend) so am hoping to get in over 30-40 hrs of animation in so hopefully I can make some big improvements
I'll also add rotation in like you mentioned before as well :)
Thanks again.
Also I checked out your website its pretty awesome I loved the latest cartoon :)
Yeah, the slide was really cool, I'd hate to see it gone. But then, maybe it would be better as its own animation or something, I dunno. If you lower the height of the last jump like you mentioned, I bet that would tie everything up nicely, good idea!
ReplyDelete