Animated Skycat: Bouncing Balls Revisited

As the 51 excercises' list states, I'm beginning with bouncing balls. Yes, those that are very simple, easy to do.
I found that you can learn and try out a lot of things on such a simple animation! Here is what I did:

1.-BALL BOUNCING IN PLACE
The first excercise, a simple bouncing ball, has a lot to do with timming and an interesting use of animation resources such as squash and stretch and perhaps, motion blur.

This one, hand made (in photoshop) was the first attempt. I like the overall look, but it is moving too fast,. Doesn't look natural enough. Duuude it even looks as if it was exited! XD

This one, in 3D, has more attention on its timming. The rotation was a last minute detail a good friend suggested ^^, and it surely ads a lot to the bounce! I really enjoy the ease-in and out of this one. The stretch just before the contact does adds to its impact :)

This one is the same bounce as the second one, in 3D too, but with MOTION BLUR added to it. I think it helps the flow of it. BUT! yes... noe that it is motion blurred, the movement seems to be just not right, at least the timming. It looks as if the ball was lazy; it's impact to the ground seems to be lost with the blur. I'd say it does not look bad, it may be another way of looking at a bounce :P

2.-BALL BOUNCING ACROSS THE SCREEN

This one adds the spacing concept, as well as the decay, to the bouncing motion.

I decided to keep the same style as the first excercise; a rubber ball.

First attempt, hand drawn again. Line boils way too much for the movement to look fluid.

The 3D version! I like this one quite much ^^. It includes the rotation ideas from the simple bounce, a better timming, and decay.

The 3D version with motion blur. Again looking for more fluid motion.

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Remember that bird running?

I finished that one, colored it, and made some adjustments. It is a toon run, so don't expect a real running cycle, at least the ones runners do at the park.

It has some flickering issues... but I like the cycle, specially his feet. Perhaps the torso could work better. I guess adding a cushioning to the moment he curls could help.

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As for the cloud proyect I've been working on. I finished designing the aircraft thing that will come out of the clouds.

The Aircraft - I wanted to make something that resembled a lot of pieces fixed together, not so much of high technology, but mechanics and copper stuff.

Here is a quick screenshot on how it may look composed with the clouds. It needs some kind of atmospheric attenuation, and I think its not big enough... perhaps I'll scale it to not fit in the frame, that'll add some magnitude.

And that's all about it. To be honest I havn't had too much time to work on this one, but the aircraft makes me eager to keep working on it. Next things to animate are going to be the clouds opening while the aircraft comes in.

That's the fun part after all, and I'm hoping it will make the sequence more interesting ;).

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Illustrations and sketches time!

I'm still working with pastels, I made this tiny tests with objects from my house, and some stills too.

Pastels are very usefull to capture color and add light to stuff. They have this particular mark making that no other tool can achieve!

It seems pro guys work with black papers, I'll try that in the near future, hoping to get comfortable with these and use them not just to make some real life studies, but to create quick illustrations, concept arts, and who knows what preproduction stuff for animations!

COLORSCRIPTS

That concept, found on the film making process, has to do with making some small colored pictures that show the mood of the frame. It has to do a lot with narrative, with what is happening in the story at that specific moment and if the color adds to the narrative.

Yes, just like red can make people alert and suggest danger, blue can suggest a police, or who knows.

The thing is, you can create a mood, or an atmosphere, for each part of the film/animation you are working with.

These colorscripts are not beautiful concept arts nor still images that work for designing characters or places, they just help the director(or animator) figure out how the look will help the story.

That said, I began working on some scripts taking my weird story creation (the one with the goat guy, which serves as my experiment).