This has been long overdue (by long overdue, I actually meant like a week overdue), but we had a lecture on the module of Animation Principles a week ago. At the end of the session, our lecturer with his funky boots, Georg, told us to take some footage of us tossing any ball (ping-pong ball, tennis ball, basketball, etc..) and watch it frame by frame in Adobe Premiere Pro.

We were told to look at the distance that the ball has moved in between frames and also the timing of the bouncing ball. From there, we also were encouraged to look at the arcs that have been formed from the bouncing movement.

My friends and I recorded ourselves throwing a ping-pong ball on the table at the library (ooh, what rebels) and later used the rotoscoping method on Photoshop. Needless to say, I spent a good five hours sat at the studio trying to rotoscope 198 frames and the result was... okay, I guess? You can be the judge of that. In my personal opinion, I could have done better at the rotoscoping part of the video.

Here we go:

I know it's fairly unpolished and somewhat jerky, or you may have thought you wasted 13 seconds of your life. Guess what? Think of the beautiful arcs you have witnessed– it isn't all thaaaat bad, right?

I'd never thought I would actually be sat in the studio using the ellipse tool, tracing over a ping-pong ball, following it through 198 frames. There's always a first time, right? On that note, thanks to <this> tutorial that I found on YouTube, I managed to get through the entire process of rotoscoping with Photoshop without physically smashing my head on the table.

Another video that we were told to try out and observe the movements was the walking human. My friends and I filmed each other walking around the library past midnight... let's just say that I hope the video never lands on anybody's hands.

Have a nice day!