How I Animated a Bouncing Ball

I'm back! Thought I kicked the bucket? Hell no! Didn't I tell you all that my whole life isn't dedicated to this blog? Are vacations such a crime for people who do this--okay, I'm sorry. I'll calm down. My life is too precious for me to die from stress...so on that note, I think I'm gonna stay faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from the evil doings of such enemies as Lois Griffin, and Dodie Bishop!

Anyway, I'm really interested in doing more post demostrating on how I make my cheap little animations on Paint, following my post on how the Nicktoons Harlem Shake! was made, which I'm really proud of. Trust me. I know that there are folks interested in how I do it. Depending on your skill in art, making Paint animations like me maybe either a piece of cake, or a piece of fruitcake. Get it? I hope.

You know the animated bouncing ball that appears at the beginning of some of my animations, such as The Eye Doctor is Your Friend!? That's exactly what I'm going to show you how I made it. I don't remember exactly why I chose a bouncing ball for the No Parking Cartoons (a "division" of No Parking Productions) logo, but I know that it is the simplest and most common example of basic animation for beginners. It is particularly good at demostrating the most important of the 12 Principles of Animation, "squash and stretch", but also "timing and spacing". Really, the bouncing ball is one animation that anybody can do, regardless of what reference source they use to make it. But you're here to see how I made it with Paint, and I'm sure that you can do it the same way as me, too! No more stalling!

These balls were simply made using the ellipse tool, hollow black, and filled with orange paint. Just a brief glimpse of this picture may make you puzzled, but let me explain. As you can see, all of the ball "cels" used in the animation were derived from this drawing of an orange ball strecthing and squashing as it falls in place. So, how did I made seven solo frames from this one drawing? Simple! Here's a screenshot recreating how I did it:

To create a solo ball frame, I take away all but one of the balls using the solid ellipse tool, colored white to obviously match the blank background. Then I save it as a new file. I do it to the first ball at the top, the second one that stretches a little bit, and so on. For the final frame with the ball settled down, I simply selected (transparently) the top ball, and placed on the spot where the totally squished ball was. Here's another screenshot recreating what I'm talking about:

Then, I erased the edges of the squished ball that are behind the normal-looking one.

Great! Now it's time to bring it all to life, using Windows Movie Maker. Recreation screenshot:

Six of the balls were added forward and backward to make the bouncing cycle, which is made up of 58 frames. Each one lasts for 0.13 seconds, although the final frame with the ball settled down was dragged to be 1.51 seconds long. The whole animation lasts 8.63 seconds in total. The blue No Parking Cartoons text is written in the Segoe Script font, animated with the "Fade, Ellipse Wipe" title animation, and goes on for 6.90 seconds. The music used was the final eight seconds of Sam Fonteyn's instrumental song, "Pizzicato Playtime", an APM Music track sometimes heard on Ren & Stimpy.

Finally, I publish the logo as a WMV file that's 856x480, and it's done to use at the beginning and/or end of my animations!

Again, these kind of posts explaining how I animate with Paint and Windows Movie Maker are going to be something I'd like to do on regular on Ze Blog. In the future, we're going to get a bit more complex, as I show you how I:

Construct a character with both the brush and shape tools

Create new frames of a character or thing without totally redrawing it

Make lip movements on my characters

The tricks I do with the selection and pasting tools

How to reuse a color that you created that is not permenantly included in the standard palette

How I remake logos for my Classic Logo Remake Parties

And so on. Stay tuned!