🌸 Week 4: Primary & Secondary Action

This week the task was to make an animation where a ball is the primary action. For the first animation I decided to attach a tail to a bouncing ball which moves in a whip-like motion. To start I sketched out a few thumbnails in my sketchbook (picture at the bottom of the page) so that I knew exactly what I was trying to achieve and then drew a guide on a spare frame to work on while animating similarly to what I did last week. At first I focused on animating the ball and once I had finished that I sketched on a very rough shape of the tail. After recording the frames to make sure that the tail moved correctly I went back over it with a pen and added more detail such as the spikes on it and the moving hair on the tail-tip. I also gave it a shadow to practice how it changes with the tail and also to practice what I learned last week doing the ball bounce shadow. The animation is 17 frames and I think I did well. 

For the second animation I decided to focus on a ball rolling from side to side with antennae on the top which swing with it as it moves. To start I did the same thing as for the first animation and made rough thumbnails in my sketchbook followed by a guide on a separate frame.This animation was 24 frames. Originally I thought about just having a blank ball however I decided to make half of it black in order to make the rolls a bit more noticable. I think it looks okay however if I would remake it I would definatelly make the anttenae move a lot more as they look quite stiff in this.

The last animation I did for week 4 was based on the example we were shown by Dermot O'Conner although I did change it slightly. I don't like the end result and there are a lot of issues which would have to be fixed the next time I attempt something like this (such as the ball not touching the ground properly) however I still think that this was a valuable learning experience.