Bouncing ball with tail WIP

So after finishing watching the webinars this afternoon all about planning I got back into some animation. Trying to take what i had learnt to heart I started by sitting down and planning my animation out with pencil and paper for an hr or so.

I'll upload some planning once i plug my scanner in :)

anyway here are a few things I worked out before I started animating

Animation: Simple ball with fox tail

Personality of ball:
Energetic,confident,Agile,Playful
-lots of big forcefull movements with self momentum.

Overview of animation:
In this animation the ball sits idle and then jumps up into air launching itself forward showing anticipation. It takes 3 jumps straight ahead to the edge of platform then does one giant jump onto a floating platform followed by a small slide as he tries to stop himself from falling off the other side.

The ball pleased with his success jumps up and down 3 times on the platform in victory however this causes the platform to fall out rapidly from underneath him leaving him hanging loony tunes style in mid air before falling down the hole at bottom of screen.

So far I have only animated up until the ball jumping on the platform. I have only animated rotation and position of ball at moment.

I started by blocking it out. It took me a lot longer than I had first anticipated to try to get the timing not looking like garbage. Biggest problem I had was judging the height and distance of the jumps.

Eventually after scrapping my work a couple of times I think im finally starting to get there. Chances are ill wake up tomorrow and notice a stack of things to change.

Cant wait to get in and start animating squash and stretch and the follow through on the tail.

I apologize in advance about how small and dodgy quality the render is. It really isnt the best shot as the ball is so small its hard to see what its doing. I might have to zoom the camera in and have it slowly move along with the balls movements.

Also a shout out to http://www.bauervision.com/downloads.html
This website has a lot of great tutorials and is where I got the free rig for ball with tail :)