3D Practice: Bouncing Ball 2

This task was hard to grasp as it challenged me to animate the same bouncing ball exercise, but in a 3D room. In 2D, it's a little easier to imagine what the ball will look like from one angle in the room, but here you have to make sure it looks right from all angles.

Case in point, I don't think this one is my best work. As the ball is bouncing off the walls, the ball is already forming it's bouncing shape before it's even hit the wall! The ball ends up looking like it's own character, changing it's shape and being it's own texture as it pleases, instead of the wall determining it's shape and speed of bounce.

3D Practice: Bouncing Ball

Maya is a difficult program. New animators, enter at your own risk.

Don't get me wrong, once you know all the controls and methods you'll be able to do it! Just be prepared for the amount of information you have to cram into your head.

The first 3D exercise I had to do was a bouncing ball (of course). Since this is the first time EVER that I used any kind of CG program, the bouncing ball took me a long time to do. In the end, it's not perfect, due to the ball bouncing and stopping too smoothly (bouncy balls go everywhere), but it at least looks like a bouncing ball! The anticipation as it goes up and down is well done and the bounces are nice and quick.

2D Practice: Splash

Creating a water splash has been my favourite 2D exercise so far, because now I can draw BIG!


The ball at the beginning of the animation is falling at the correct speed as if it was just thrown by somebody. I like how the ripples ended up, making the screen look like water without having to colour it in. The drops of water that came from the splashes are also a nice touch to the animation.


If I did have a problem, it would be how the splashes themselves don't seem to land in the water after rising into the air. They instead shrink back into the water, especially the second splash where it looks like it came out just to do a Mexican wave. The splashes defied gravity!


The splash was animated in twos and exported in 24fps, making the ending result look a lot smoother.

2D Practice: Walk Cycle

The walk cycle is an iconic exercise to do when trying out animation. This walk cycle done in 2D is the first one I've done and one I'm very proud of.

The line work throughout the cycle is slightly wobbly and the way the figure is walking looks a little strange, considering the legs sometimes slide across the floor and makes the figure look like they're on a treadmill.

However, being a first-timer when it comes to this exercise, I feel like I've made a massive improvement to my animation skills after studying this exercise, as it allowed me to look closer at how a human walks.

2D Practice: Head Turn

It has taken me such a long time to get this task right, and although with more practice I can do better, I'm so glad that I finally managed to make it look presentable (it's not just a ball with eyes now)!

Doing the head turn is harder than it looks. For this task I felt like I needed a frame timeline for referencing. I did use one but I believe there are certain things a frame timeline is useful for, and other times it feels kind of pointless using one.

I animated this in twos since I thought it looked more appealing. When trying to animate it in ones, it looked like the character was getting a whiplash. I ended up exporting it in 24fps in order to make it a lot smoother.