Rolling Ball Animation

For my rolling ball animation project, I decided to create an original animation. First, I drew out a storyboard. Essentially, I wanted to depict a ball rolling off a table onto the floor, then bumping into a larger ball, and finally that larger ball knocking a cup of water over. (Sorry for the crappy phone camera quality).

For my principles of animation, I employed squash and stretch, anticipation, and framing. The small red ball squashes and stretches when it bounces on the floor and against the larger, heavier ball. The larger ball does not change form as much to indicate that it weighs more, like a bowling ball. I employ a bit of anticipation when the ball can be seen at the ledge of the table, about to fall but not quite falling. I slowed down the movement there to achieve this. Finally, as you can see in my final video, I created a camera to follow the action so that the audience knows where to focus their attention.

Below are three different angles of the events:

After some adjustments, this is the final animation with camera framing:

I had intended to texture the other ball, the cup, and the floor, but Maya actually started crashing as soon as I opened Hypershade. Going forward, I'll definitely be using a stronger computer that doesn't crash and lose all my saved work every time I go to texture something :( As far as other things that need fixing, I know the red ball's squash and stretch animation looks a little funky, but I wasn't sure where exactly the problem was occurring. The movement could definitely be more realistic though.