Bouncy Ball

Project 3

March 24, 2022

Project Description

Storyboards

Animation Principles

Top 3 principles

1. Squash & Stretch

Much of the balls' personalities are expressed through their elasticity. Folly has exaggerated squashes and stretches to demonstrate his outgoing nature. On the other hand, Molly, reserved and self-contained, does not squash and stretch as much.

Note: I measured the height/width ratio to ensure the volume would stay the same regardless of the balls' amount of squish. I don't know why the images below appear to skew this ratio a bit.

Finalists

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2. Staging

I set up a small scene with one wall, a floor, and a table. I angled a single camera with a limited view that stayed within the scene. The camera angle moved a few times to focus on various aspects of the characters, such as the interactions between Molly and Folly, and the emergence of the tulip. Only one object moved at any moment to keep the audience's attention focused on the storyline without competing dialogues.

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3. Followthrough & Overlapping Action

When Folly pushes the tulip into the scene, the vase and the tulip move at different rates (overlapping action). When Folly stops, the vase halts, but the tulip moves forward a bit (followthrough).

Finalists

4. Anticipation -- Both Molly and Folly compress everytime before bouncing (e.g. Molly's slow compression leading into a series of bounces before the tulip's arrival).

5. Pose to Pose -- Each leap committed by Folly and Molly have been composed by first setting the beginning, middle, and end poses. Then a few intermediary poses were set.

6. Slow In & Slow Out -- The vase moves at a non-linear rate across the table top. The vase begins its transition slowly, quickens, then slows to halt.

7. Arcs -- Both Folly and Molly leap in arches when transitioning horizontally.

8. Secondary Action -- One of the tulip petals commits a secondary followthrough action to complement the first action of the entire flower moving forward after the vase ceases forward motion.

9. Timing -- Molly's and Folly's movements represent realistic bounces (timing-wise) that could be viewed in the natural world. For example, when they fall into the drawers, they have realistic rebounds.

10. Exaggeration -- Most of Folly's movements, especially his squash & squish, are exaggerated.

11. Solid Drawing -- The setup takes place in a 3-d perspective on a tabletop with objects with volume.

12. Appeal -- Molly and Folly are simple characters (mono-colored spheres in a setting where there are no extraneous objects unrelated to the storyline). However, I tried to give them appeal by giving them personalities, ambition (Folly's quest to impress Molly), and challenges.