I have successfully recreated all four of the bouncing balls exercises in the stop motion room, one of which has additionally been made within Maya. I was very disappointed with how my minimalist research on these objects negatively affected my first attempt at these exercises, so I was hoping that my primary and secondary research (as shown in a previous blog post) would help make a better outcome. The main difference between these versions and the previous ones, is that fact that the whole of the objects movements are recorded until they come to a stop, thus showing the whole process and making it easier to distinguish each object, as they all stop in very different ways.

Ping Pong Ball

This is my ping pong ball animation. I tried to capture the light and small properties of the ping pong ball by making the movement quick, keeping more of a constant speed than most of the other objects, however not without totally ignoring the principal of 'slow in slow out', thus still indicating the forces of momentum and gravity. I am very pleased with how this animation has turned out, as I feel I would be able to assume the object by nothing more than the video, something I know I definitely would be unable to do with the original.

Bowling Ball

As I have mentioned previously, the bowling ball is by far the easiest to capture the movements of, due to the fact that it's properties are vastly different from any of the other objects, and for this reason, my initial animation was satisfactory in my eyes, however I still felt the need to remake it, as I thought it still could have been better. In this version, I gave the bowling ball more of a roll at the end, as a real bowling ball would do. The heavy and hard nature of the bowling ball was indicated by it's gradually increasing yet quick decent, and lack of bouncing after the initial contact.

Balloon

On my previous balloon animation, I knocked the camera by accident midway through the making of, therefore the final project had a wobble, which made the whole video look amateur and messy. I managed to prevent that this time, and also feel I have vastly improved upon the motion itself as well. In order to portray the very light feel to the balloon, I made sure that the motion was slow, and mostly remained at a constant speed, only speeding up slightly before and after it hits the ground. This is because, due to its weight, gravity would not have as much of an affect on it. As a balloon is also not perfectly circular, it isn't always going to progress in the same direction, which I attempted to show in my animation by having the arch alter from long but low and short but high after each bounce.

Beach Ball

This is my beach ball animation. This was one of the hardest to produce, mainly because the motion shares similarities with the ping pong ball, therefore it was difficult to make it stand out as a beach ball. During my research, I discovered that due to the increased size but still relatively light weight of the beach ball, there will be a lot more emphasis on the 'slow in, slow out' principal during each bounce, which I believe I have shown through my animation. It would also likely bounce higher. As mentioned in the research, the video that I used for reference had the ball bounce off of another object, which I felt would be suitable to incorporate into my animation, thus giving me a better understanding of the properties of the beach ball.

Overall I am very satisfied with the progress that I have made on my stop motion animations, as the quality is without a doubt improved, and it goes to show how essential research prior to the making of is. These Exercises have helped me to understand the importance of observing, as little things such as a ball bouncing would be benefited greatly when animating by observing the object itself, in order to keep some realism and therefore believability into your work. I didn't enjoy creating these as much as I did my block interaction, as I felt I wasn't getting my own ideas across and was instead just focusing on accuracy, but I still see the importance and still found some enjoyment out of creating them.

As mentioned, I also selected one of these balls to re-animate in Maya, so I chose the ping pong ball, as I felt that was my most successful one. I followed the same bar sheet as I used with the stop motion version, thus ensuring the same or similar motion. I found this a lot easier than I did in the stop motion room (as always), as I can alter arcs, heights etc. at will.