So after gathering some information, reading the excerpts from The Animator's Survival Kit, and giving it a bit of thought, I was left with this graphic:
I plugged this into Rough Animator, set the project to 27 frames (to match the number of balls in the graphic I made) and set the frame rate to 12 FPS. I then drew over my plotting graphic, correcting for consistency as I went.
I ended up with this animation:
Sweet.
The size shrinks up a bit at the end, so I tweaked a little for size consistency, then tested it again at 24 FPS - just to see what it looks like.
I like 12 FPS is a little better, but the timing doesn’t feel quite right. The speed between bounces is too consistent.
I like how quickly the ball enters the frame in the 24 FPS version, so I removed 3 frames from the 12 FPS version to speed up the front end.
I learned about the “spring” after ground contact, which is covered briefly in The Animator’s Survival Kit.
This gives the object a little more weight.
In my next animation study, I'll be taking another excerpt from The Animator's Survival Kit and sharing what I've learned about straight ahead animation, pose-to-pose animation, and mixed animation.
