Tutorial Session: Tuesday

Tutorial Session: Tuesday

The session today was really important, as the basics of animating on Photoshop were introduced by Mark. With three hours working on the achieving a bouncing ball animation, I created 2 animations. The first was really experimenting on getting the most basic idea correct – a ball bouncing on the spot. Using the guideline system of a line broken up into several segments, the animation was pretty accurate. As a result of that, my confidence grew and I chose to include an additional animation that ran coherently with the bouncing ball. A trap door would open, sending another bouncing ball across the screen. This second animation was a challenge and after some discussion, I chose to do a second animation, where the focus would be on getting the ball to move across the screen in a realistic way.

This second animation wasn’t too bad, although I chose to take an informal approach to the ending. A second ball approaches, transforms into a hammer, and knocks the ball away. This was a fun experiment in applying squash and stretch in different ways, but it didn’t focus on what I wanted it to (getting the arc and timing right) so I am planning to do more work later this week on getting that right.

This session was invaluable and I definitely feel that my animating is moving in the right direction. Some more practice and a polished look would mean that the 2D animation is finished. Hopefully this can be achieved on Thursday.

Improvements I can make next time:

Stay focused on my goal (getting an accurate moving bouncing ball animation).

Practice more with the animating tools.

Finish my 2D bouncing ball animation (?)