In this week, we dove into the essentials of animating a “ball and tail”. Using the principles overlapping action, follow-through and secondary motion, and utilising the lessons learned from week 1’s bouncing ball, I strove to produce a fluid and lifelike animation.
Overview of the Exercise:
In order to simulate realistic motion that complies with physical rules, the ball with tail animation assignment requires animating a ball that is attached to a tail. This practice emphasises:
- Overlap and Follow-Through: This technique shows an understanding of momentum and inertia by animating the tail to follow the ball’s movement organically.
- Secondary Action: Adding delicate tail motions to the ball’s primary action to give it more depth and realism.
As well as being an appendage that trails behind a body, moving tails in animation should convey a sort of lifelike quality. This can be done through the use of anticipation, but being careful to make it not look like the tail is propelling the body forward.
Here is a rough sketch of my plan, making note of how the tail should be positioned at different stages. The tail was innacurate which I realised after my review session with George, being that the resting state should be in more of an S shape than a C shape.
As you can see, the tail movements weren’t as exaggerated as they should have been, prompting me to conduct further research into how a “wave action” should work.
I recognised that even though we are at the blocking phase, the animation should clearly explain the intended action, even without frame-by-frame detail. To improve my understanding, I did additional research on wave motion, hoping to depict a more dynamic, genuine movement in the tail. Additional anatomy work helped me improve my knowledge of realistic motion. This iterative approach underlined the significance of successfully stacking animation principles, with the goal of creating an animation that is both structurally sound and visually appealing.