So I've been studying a course on traditional animation and I've noticed
now that Pixel Joint does a lot of 'straight-through' animation. Generally
it's a bad thing but depending on what you want it can become good.

After I complete my course I'll write a tutorial for all you go getters who
are interested. I've done animation before but this is my first uhh.....
'educated' animation? I don't know. I'm using ALL the proper things that
Disney do. It's pretty crazy. Anyways here it is? What do you think?

http://megaswf.com/serve/1043258/

I'm aware it's supposed to get lower, but we just had to make a cycle
for the exercise.

what good is that comment? why even waste the time to type it? this board is for criticism, so back up any opinions with something the artist might actually, you know.... find helpful.

is there a way to slow down the frames, to study them better? is the ball self-propelled? it seems to be sentient, the way it reaches toward the ground from the air. i'm no animator, so i can't really give super crits here. it does seem pretty elementary, so I don't really know what there is to say about it. physics are more or less convincing.


Edited by cure - 26 March 2011 at 6:45pm

"it's ok but not great" isn't the least bit helpful. if it's nothing to crit about, then don't bother typing anything. now stay on topic, this thread isn't for you to argue in, it's for critique, and this is your second irrelevant post. my own response was primarily to keep the thread on topic, which I shouldn't have had to do a second time. no one's flaming you, don't take this as a personal attack, just use proper forum etiquette and move on.


Edited by cure - 26 March 2011 at 7:16pm

@Taron,

The bouncing ball is traditionally the first animation a frame by frame artist
is supposed to make. It's like a rite of passage. It also shows that you're
able to apply squash and stretch when necessary, which is one of the
many elements of animation. So I guess, yes, it's nothing special, but was
created solely to prove I can do squash and stretch an object. If you don't
give something you animate an essence it can't come to life. Trust me, I've
been on Deviant Art and seen some horrible bouncing balls. If you look at the
ones that are just static balls that don't change shape but move over the
screen, you'll begin to understand what I'm talking about.

@Cure,

I can make it a click through animation for you, but unless you have Flash
you can't really get that luxury of panning back and forth the animation as
fast you want with the mouse. Flash really makes you begin to appreciate the
hard work of traditional animation. Before I scanned all my pages at my course,
I had to flick through the pages(frames) with my fingers. I still can't flick
through it right! I'll post a picture for you at the bottom aswell as a click
through link.

In response to everything else you said, I should have noted that I was under
certain criteria while making this animation, and one of those was that I
created a 'line of action' and followed it. The main intention was for me to
create a loop. I took great consideration when applying the physics of the
ball but there is only so much you can do when it only bounces once
(the rest are duplicated frames of course!) :-D

@Tanuki,

Yeah, that's just you.. hahahah :-)

The ball does overlap itself, but never on the same frame! If you try animate
something where something doesn't overlap itself, the movement between frames
isunbelievable. You gotta keep it subtle! The closer things are, the smoother.
That was the smoothest I could possibly make it for 12fps. I wasn't allowed
to use more frames, because by a certain amount of time (1 second) I had to
make the ball hit the ground again. 12fps = 12 frames per second, so I could
only do 12  drawings before it hit the ground again. I also had to speed it
up and slow it down in some places to make it look realistic, like as the ball
reached it's peak it slowed down. So basically more drawings were in that area.
I had to allocate my time!

Ahh symmetry in motion. Gotta love the onion skinning tool.

 

Edited by ChrisButton - 27 March 2011 at 4:05am