Project 3: Bouncy Ball?
Final Animation:
Storyboard
Principles
Squash and Stretch
Used on several occasions with the ball bird, most notably when it bounces at the end of the animation.
Anticipation
Used in conjunction with squash and stretch when the bird is jumping and when the bird is exclaiming at the other bird's skills.
Staging
Used mostly to draw attention to the primary character of the frame, with instances such as the camera angle when the ball bird is watching the other bird doing a skate trick, or when the ball bird is far when it is flying quickly, or close when it is realizing its lack of flight.
Pose to pose
The vast majority of animations were made pose to pose, especially all the ramp skating animations.
Slow in and slow out
Most gravity related actions involved slow in and slow out, particularly for when the ball bird is flying high into the air, then falling again.
Arcs
Ramps are arc shaped so all the skate animations count right? Otherwise, when the ball bird is jumping onto its skateboard, it moves in an arc.
Exaggeration
These skater birds are most definitely not following the laws of physics.
Appeal
I may be biased, but I believe our characters have a certain appeal.
My Inspiration
Two serendipitous events led to my creating of this animation. First: I saw a post online of an extremely round bird, quite literally ball shaped, making a ball shaped bird a perfect candidate for the ball bouncing animation. Second, I was playing a little bit of a computer game called SkateBIRD, which involves various fashionably dressed birds who fly high on skateboards. With these two pieces put together, the perfect animation idea came to me, thus bringing to life what you have seen above.
Challenges
This project's theme was overambition, as I planned an overelaborate animation rendered using Arnold. My hopes and dreams began fading 20 minutes into rendering the first frame of nearly 2000 frames, with the realization dawning on me that my computer physically could not handle the Arnold renderer. Still, I stubbornly pushed onwards, until four hours and several force-shutdowns of my computer later, I finally reached the breaking point of my sanity. I was a fool from the beginning to even consider abandoning the old trusty, Playblast, and in the end, I came crawling back to it.