Bouncing Ball Animation Project

The Project Overview

Over the past week, we have been animating a bouncing ball using Adobe Photoshop. We created layers such as the ground, sky, and ball and added gradients to them to make it look more realistic. We then created ball layers to make the ball look as if it was moving, using animation principles such as squash and stretch and ease in and ease out. Then, we used the timeline to actually make the ball bounce, cutting some duplicate layers to make the animation look smoother.  After we successfully made the ball bounce, we changed the file to a GIF file so we could post it here!

Have I Learned Anything?

Yeah, you could say I learned a little about animation and Photoshop. To start off, I hadn't ever used Adobe Photoshop. I'd used photo editing apps that used layers and cool tools like that. But nothing like Photoshop. While animating the ball with the "timeline" in Photoshop, I learned about some basic principles of animation: squash and stretch and ease in and ease out. Squash was used to show the impact of the ball hitting the ground, and stretch was used to make the ball look as if it sped up. Ease in and ease out was based on slowly spacing out each ball frame to make it speed up or slow down. Regarding the layer editing part of the project, I learned to add gradients to the ground, sky, and ball to make them look more realistic. I also learned how to draw shapes such as the ball, and make a perfect circle (using the option key).

 Next Time

If we did this project again, I would probably focus more on the gradients of the layers and making a better background (clouds, sun, etc.). I could probably touch up the animation's frames as well. You know, to make it look smoother. Finally, I would make the ball start higher in the air so that I could get at least 7 or 8 frames of the ball before it hit the ground. The color and gradient of the ball is one thing I would keep the same though, because it looks 3D enough. I'd also keep the placement of the ground the same, because it should probably take up 1/3 of the portrait. The overall design of my project looked good, but some little things need tweaking to make it even better.

Eventually, the ball will turn purple, I promise. Make sure to look out for it!