The bouncing ball is probably the most used exercise for learning about spacing and timing in animation. It's not as easy as it looks. As a matter of fact I ended up scraping everything I did the first time and started over after Russ had a look at them (he is an expert at this, don't ask). In my first version the arches of the bounces were in the shape of a dome. They should be the shape of a parabola. The spacing of the balls, which controls the speed of the bounce from frame to frame, was also not quite right. Generally speaking the ball should be slowest at the highest point of the arch and fastest as it comes down. I missed a few places which was very noticeable to him. He then proceeded to describe and write down the formula of how the arches should look like, expecting me to make use of it:
I told him that I was an Artist; me no do math no more.
Anyhow, no pain no gain. I used Autodesk Maya for this exercise, which is a good way to learn the basic animation controls in the application.
Ping-pong ball
Wooden ball
Metal ball
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