Like a Rubber Ball

Continuing with Richard Williams’ Animator’s Survival Guide, here’s my second attempt at the bouncing ball. Williams doesn’t suggest the set of steps, that’s just something that I couldn’t resist trying.

I did think of doing this again using stop action and a coin but I’m keen to introduce an element of drawing. This is still deliberately basic: it would be easy to have the ball squish slightly as it hits the step but Williams advises that it’s easy to overdo that kind of thing.

I used Adobe Animate to add movement to a single Fresco drawing, saved as a PSD Photoshop document, with the ball on a separate layer.

bounce sound track

For the sound of the ball bouncing I used a pair of trainers, banged together. I couldn’t keep up with the speed of the bouncing ball, but it was so satisfying to cut and paste the soundtrack to match the precise moment that the ball makes contact with the step.