What makes one go ‘WOW!’ when they see good animation? It is some basic principles used in an interesting manner. To learn these, you do not need to learn complex character animation. You can do that from very simple ones. Once you have mastered them, you can apply what you have learnt to create the complex stuff.

One such example is the bouncing ball exercise. This is a very standard exercise done even in 2D animation.

Check the below link for bouncing ball example:
(http://www.dsource.in/course/principles-animation/squash-and-stretch)

This is also an equally good exercise to do in 3D.  In this module you will go through all the basic stages that you will need to do both simple as well as complex animation. It will take you step by step from the beginning to finally creating an animation sequence of the bouncing ball. At the end, you will be ready to start with the more complex stuff.
 

You will be surprised with how even something as simple as animating a ball bouncing can teach you so much about animation and hopefully you will be able to use these stages in all the animation that you do.

a. Research and Referencing:
For becoming a good animator, the art of observation is very important. You need to know very well, whatever you need to animate. So you need to try and get good references for it, study them well and learn to feel the animation (the WOW!) as well as understand the mechanics of what makes it work so that you can use the software to create it (the HOW?).

b. Observation:
For this module, we have shot a simple reference of a bouncing ball. Download and study it well before attempting to animate.

Refer the Video:
Bouncing-Ball - Reference Video

• Youtube
• D'source
• Download

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Attachment	Size
bouncing-ball-reference.mp4	38.11 MB