My Animation 3D

Later, I made a 3D animation of a bouncing ball. I used Autodesk Maya to do this, with a 'ball rig' that had created specifically for this kind of animation. Similarly to animating traditionally, you start by setting key frames at points on the timeline, which show the objects position at that time. Unlike animating in 2D on Photoshop, the computer fills in the middle frames for you, approximately calculating the ball's acceleration. This doesn't mean it's easier though, as the movement the computer calculates is usually simple and unrealistic. You then have to go through a process of looking at the position vector graphs, and tweeking them to increase or decrease the acceleration at certain times (like making it accelerate quickly as it drops, due to gravity, and decelerating as it bounces back up).

This is actually a pretty fun process, especially when you know that this kind of process is what the proffessionals use to make CG animated films, and (of course) computer games. However I decided I would create my animation in 2D on Photoshop, as I wanted to be able to concentrate a lot on facial expression.