My Animation 2D

My first mini-project was to create a 2D looping animation of a ball bouncing, using the Photoshop animation feature (available in Photoshop CS3 to CS5). This was to practice traditional hand drawn animation. I made it at a frame rate of 12 fps (frames per second). This is a good frame rate for traditional animation, as it is enough frames to be smooth, but not too many frames as to make the process painstakingly slow.

The process of making a 2D, drawn animation appear full of movement involves using all of the 12 principles. In the bouncing ball exercise, 'squash and stretch' was the most important part. This is used, not only to create the illusion of physics working upon the ball (it squashes as it 'hits' the floor, and stretches and deforms as it rises), but to replicate effects that a camera would usually put on the image, such as motion blur, which is replicated by stretching the ball as it moves.

I found animating traditionally, drawn and 2D, to be pretty fun, and its simplicity allows you to be creative. For the ball bouncing, I did a very simple scene, as there is a floor (rough horizontal line) and a white background. Finalized and televised cartoons however, have detailed scenes and backgrounds, which give the illusion of a three dimensional environment. I would have to bare this in mind if i chose to do a 2D animation for my final project, as a visually pleasing setting, to which characters and objects can seamlessly interact with, is an important part of the animation.