Project 3 (2/28/19)

Cannonball!!

This is the storyboard I drew before I started the animation. I already had an idea of what I wanted to do. I did not follow the tutorial in the book. I just made this crude drawing and started animating. Please don’t be offended by my bad drawing skills or handwriting.

Squash and Stretch

One of the easiest principles to implement was squash and stretch. As shown above, I made the most dramatic stretch when the ball shoots out of the cannon and then the biggest squash after the cannonball’s first bounce off the ground. Since cannonballs are made of metal and are pretty heavy they don’t really bounce that much so I tried not to exaggerate the squash and stretch too much.

Anticipation

As the cannon gets ready to fire, it shakes and shrinks into itself. I made it do this slowly to make it more dramatic and build up anticipation.

Staging

For the staging principle, I implement this by using two main camera angles in my animation. When the animation first starts, the cannon is the largest thing in the shot so the viewer’s attention is on it but you can still see the hole in the distance, which initially sets the scene. Then the second shot flips so the hole is the biggest thing in the scene. A few seconds fter the camera shifts, the cannonball finally bounces into the shot and then into the hole.

Exaggeration

When the cannon fires, it extends a bit before shrinking back to its original position. The whole cannon firing sequence is also exaggerated since cannons don’t really shake and shrink and stretch like this in real life.

The Actual Animation:

As a final note, I also use secondary action and arcs in my animation. After the cannon fires, the cannon bounces back a bit in small arcs since this kind of cannon wouldn’t just sit still with that big of an explosion and that much build up. This is also a secondary action to the cannon firing the cannonball. I didn’t follow the bouncing ball tutorial in the book, but I think it might have made this a bit easier if I had since I animated the ball first and then the extra cannon animations which messed up the ball animation several times. I also wanted to add water in the hole but I couldn’t figure out how to do this even with some tutorials.

Link to Cannon Object: https://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/547487

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