I shall call Him "Squishy" and he shall be my Squishy

TA-DA! I have a sucessful squishy ball bounce!  I even did some research on the turtorials that Maya provides and looked up how to make it red.  I spent 5 hours on the darn thing and I feel accomplished, is it perfect? No not really but that will all come in time.  I had a blast working on it and I can't wait to start another project!  For the next two months it will probably be nothing of posts of the same things just hopefully the next will be better then the last.  They should be right?  I mean my grandparents, parents, and every other elder in my life has not been telling me "practice makes perfect" for nothing right?

A Success and A Half

FINALLY! I have a ball bounce that I sat and did by myself!  Yes there are some kinks that need worked out but the first skeletal part of it is done and I feel accomplished!  The half the success is that when I uploaded it on youtube part of the video went missing :/ so its hard to see the whole thing.  But still it is started and I am ready to finish it.  So I give to you Ball Bounce Take One.

Sad Panda

Okay so a ball bounce is way harder then I thought, I think I tried on my own for 2 hours then I finally accepted defeat and asked for help.  I feel like an idiot, I thought everything looked right on the time bar but every time my ball bounced it went to fast and looked like it was having a spasm.  When Jeff came over and extended my time line and showed me I was using the wrong part of the graph editor I wanted to sink threw the floor and die.  At least now its started and I plan on going back to the lab every day until I have a successful ball bounce. 

The Beggining

Ball Bounces, the first and most fundemental thing to learn.  I started off by reading Richard William's book "The Animators Survival Kit".  I then drew out the picture above using his book as a reference.  I tried to make the movements closer together at the top of the ark and more spaced out at the bottom.  Looking at the sketch now I realize I probably didn't do the best job of it.  Last night I went to the computer lab and my friend Jeff had me do a Ball Bounce my way first, then looking at what I had done he asked me how I went about it.  I admitted I had try to create my own math to it, he chuckled and said "OK well don't do that."  The showing me about contact positions he told me to animate the in between s.  The again showed me where I was wrong, and after repeating this several times I started to feel like he was doing all the work.  Tonight I'm going back to the lab and this time I'm on my own, and hopefully I remember everything Jeff taught me. 

Ball Bounce