Why is the bouncing ball animation exercise so popular?
The first exercise that almost all animators tackle is the bouncing ball.
Whilst this might not seem very exciting, there are many benefits to this classic exercise.
Since the next lesson in my free Into Motion course focuses on the bouncing ball, I wanted to provide a little background as to why this exercise is so popular.
First of all, a ball is one of the simplest things you can possibly animate. This keeps the technical complexity low, so that you can focus on understanding how to move things in a believable way.
This simplicity also means that it’s a very fast exercise to complete.
A complex piece of character animation might require days of work, whilst a ball bounce can be animated in minutes.
This speed also allows for rapid iteration and experimentation, which are both crucial for learning.
Another great thing about the bouncing ball is that it enables us to make use of a large number of the 12 principles of animation within a single exercise.
Whilst we can’t practice all of the principles with the bouncing ball, those that we do cover provide a solid grounding for everything that we animate in the future.
The other great thing about balls is that they come in all sorts of different sizes and materials.
This gives us an opportunity to explore how the material something is made from impacts the way that it moves, and learn how to capture this within our animation.
This is a topic which we’ll be exploring more in the the fourth lesson of the course.
If you’re ready to start tackling the bouncing ball, the latest lesson is available now.
