Pose to Pose: Pendulum Animation

Continuing on from my ball bouncing up and down animation, I created a pendulum animation. A pendulum animation is basically an arc in an animation. So an example of this sort of animation would be a person jumping or a skateboard going down a half-pipe. Generally, I learnt most animations involve some sort of pendulum.

As you can see above I first had to map out my pendulum with a compass and pencil to create a semi circle. Then I had to divide the frames up into twelve parts. The sections near both ends had to be closer together than the sections in the middle so that when I place the ball into the right position on each number the balls are closer together at the edge and further apart in the middle. When it comes to animating it hopefully it will look like the ball speeds up as it cruises down and up the half-pipe.

The above is when I drew the ball on each frame but instead of drawing each on a different page I drew them all on the same. The reason I did this was so I could add in speed lines. Speed lines might not be that necessary but I feel it adds the effect of an object moving faster.

 

I then re-traced the balls on a new sheet of animation paper and drew the speed lines in the opposite direction to illustrate what it would look like when the ball heads in the opposite direction. Overall I enjoyed this exercise. Certainly I found it a lot less arduous than the bouncing the ball on the spot flip-book, but I believe this is because it was the first time I had done something like that so had assumed it would be far easier. Anyway I had had some experience now so was just able to create something that flowed a lot smoother.

Above is my final pendulum animation.