How to Animate a bouncing ball

Instructional

How to Animate a bouncing ball

Materials
-Pencil & eraser
-A ruler
-post it pad
-A ball for reference

Before we start with the steps there are 3 things I would like to talk about. There’s straight ahead, pose to pose and the combination of both animations.

Straight ahead is when an animator just draws without planning the key frames. This style of animation has “…a natural flow of fluid, spontaneous action” which “… can produce surprises.” [1]

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There are also disadvantages to this type of animation. Straight ahead could be time consuming having to experiment multiple times until the animator or director gets something they like. This type of animation is also expensive because of the resources put into making the animation.

Pose to pose on the other hand is a planned kind of animation where the animator puts in the key frames and any other important poses. The Animator then puts in the in-betweens from one pose to the other.

The disadvantage to this type of animation is that the animation may end up looking “… a bit choppy [and] a bit unnatural.” [1]

The last thing is an animator can animate with the combination of straight ahead and pose to pose where the key frames and important poses are drawn as guides. The animator will then animate straight ahead and revise parts of the key frames as needed.

Now before you start animating first thing you should do is watch how a ball bounces up and down. You 

notice that as a ball bounces back up it slows down as it reaches its peak and then gains back speed as it falls back down.

Also take notice how long a bounce takes and take that into account on how many frames per second you would like to animate. For the purpose of this animation, stick to 15 frames per second.  

These instructions will teach you how to animate a ball bouncing up and down in one place.

Steps:

1. Draw in the key frames

• on the first page, draw where you want the ball to start off at and a ground plane for the ball to bounce onto.
• on the 8th page, draw the ball in contact with the ground plane.
• on the 15^th page, draw where you want the ball to stop.

    2.   Now start drawing the in-betweens between page 1 and 8 and then  page 8 and 15. 

•  remember to add in ease ins and ease outs to create the illusion of gravity.
•  also the stretch and squash for the illusion of weight.

    3.    After finishing the drawings flip through the papers and watch the animation.

Williams, R. (2001). The animator's survival kit. Faber and Faber Inc.
[1](Williams, 2001)P 62