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Let's Get the Ball Rolling

  • penspeare
  • Nov 1, 2021
  • 13 min read

Updated: Jan 25, 2022

"The Bouncing Ball"

The Bouncing Ball exercise is one of the first tasks undertaken by, not only beginner animators, but the more seasoned ones for warm-up purposes, as it is the perfect tool to begin teaching us, in practice, the bare bones of the 12 principles of animation. As Ray Chase puts it, "in its simplest form, [the bouncing ball] teaches you the basics of timing, spacing, arcs, squash & stretch, appeal, etc." which is the fundamentals of animation itself. You need to learn to crawl before you can walk, after all. A major purpose of these back to basic exercises is, not only for those who are completely brand new to animation (hi, hello), but to allow us the chance to learn the software. I'm teething through the Toon Boom Harmony software to get to grips with it; my first time using it at all. It's... certainly a journey, especially as someone who tends towards more traditional mediums. It's necessary though and, as you'll see moving through these blog posts, I definitely do start getting the hang of it, slowly but surely.

So, I created a very basic bouncing ball animation with use of Arcs, Squash and Stretch, and Slow In/Slow Out*, however, I need to look into incorporating Anticipation as well as Follow Through and Overlapping Action, and Solid Drawing. However, I'm still getting to grips with the software but understand that those are the areas I need to work on *This one in particular needed work after seeing all the rendered animations, and it's one that is particularly integral to the timing of animation so that it looks more realistic. I noticed it is very difficult to actually see how the animations are getting on until I watch them fully, a bit like video editing in general.

  • Although I've worked out the most basic of basics and produced something albeit incredibly rough from the bouncing ball exercise so far, I realised it would be best to do some research by taking some video footage of a variety of real life bouncing balls to see just exactly how they bounce, move around depending on the driving force behind the movement, and the surface area it interacts with and reacts to:

  1. An exercise ball

  2. A Rubber Dog Toy

  3. A Tennis Ball


Once I capture the footage, I'll need to:

  • Track the Arcs

  • Note the Squash and Stretch (S&S)

  • Note the Follow Through and Overlapping Action

  • Take into account the Timing and exactly how the balls Slow In, Slow Out/Ease In, Ease Out based on their speed and weight

  • Once noted based on the first-hand research, figure out the best way to Exaggerate to "make it bigger and more obvious" (12 Principles of Animation via YouTube 18 minutes 22 seconds in)

  • After conducting and reviewing the first-hand research of the three different bouncing balls, I thought more about the Staging as I watched the balls interact with their environment, or the scene. Some knocked objects over, others bounced off the walls or off other objects, and it also brings in the importance of Solid Drawing and, once again, it affected the Follow Through and Overlapping Action as the balls settle and adds a better sense of realism to the subject, further helping the audience to suspend their disbelief despite the Exaggeration in other areas

  • Here's my first attempt at The Bouncing Ball exercise (and Toon Boom Harmony in general):

GIF of a rough, simplistic, purple ball bouncing across the screen over a black background.
First attempt at "Bouncing Ball" (and Toon Boom in general!). No reference here; simply the bare bones of a "classic bouncing ball" exercise.

  • Size inconsistency - big no-no, though might be imagining it from staring at it for too long;

  • Looks odd near the end - needs adjusting; perhaps more/less frames, or more attention and consideration to Squash and Stretch? It could be the lack of Follow Through or its Overlapping Action, actually, that ends up giving the ball a bit of a lifeless look;

  • The Timing is most certainly off. It's okay at the start, but could use with a couple more drawings, spaced more closely together, so that there is more Slow In, but then ending definitely needs more drawings for an effective Slow Out because that principle, at the point, is just straight up absent;

  • Could also adjust the Arcs, as they may not be very accurate. In fairness, this is a rough test so it doesn't need to be perfect, but there is no harm in working out the kinks. Trial and error, and learn by doing, and failing after all - never a bad thing! Take notes!

  • It looks like it's rolling through the air in some parts, but that looks pretty cool

  • Was pointed out it's a boiling effect - happy accident! Always loved the effect in Squigglevision-esque animation such as Ed, Edd n Eddy, Home Movies, and DR Katz: Professional Therapist - it gives off a very hand drawn or "DIY" vibe. Embrace the imperfections - did you know Ed, Edd n Eddy was the last Western animation (at least at Cartoon Network) that utilised traditional methods as Antonucci felt that digital means "did not capture the subtle imperfections and charm that traditional animation often conveyed" look at these references - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1x4yHzYlD4 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuJr1EJ0ES4


  • Getting used to the software aside, digital drawing in general is weird for me to get used to. The software is then especially intimidating for a stubborn, traditional artist like me, who is completely brand new to the likes of Toon Boom Harmony, also animation in general. I'm not so stubborn, though, that I'd refuse to learn. I know I'm capable, and I want to learn. It's just a particularly steep learning curve for me in many ways.


This just shows how important squash and stretch is to effectively convey the apparent hardness of the object; I got lazy with it near the end and, lo and behold, it turned into a boulder! It gave me a laugh though with how bad it is. There was an attempt!

I was watching a video by animator vlogger and educator Toniko Pantoja on traditional habits for digital animation. I noticed while watching it that I fell victim to a few of them, which made me realise that was why some of the bouncing ball animation experiments look so mechanical, especially the one directly above.

I remember getting frustrated with the tablet I was using, and ended up copying and pasting frames to be more economical to save time and energy, and I simply rotated the ball, or "flipped", or distorted the drawing y stretching it with the transform tools or equivalent instead of just redrawing it. It actually really hindered it, and affected the way the ball looked. For example, the hardness of the ball.



Had another go at the bouncing ball exercise, more familiar with the software, but not with a Cintiq. Very, very tricky. I used the footage I'd taken (video link above) of throwing my exercise ball about the studio as a reference guide.

As the book Timing for Animation states, to understand how cartoon matter behaves, it is necessary to look more closely into the way matter behaves naturally", otherwise we're just imitating imitations, right? From there on, we can then Exaggerate the animation because animation is, after all, larger than life and - I will warn you now, I will sound like a broken record throughout these blog posts for these - must be clear and concise. As the book also states how "cartoon film is a medium of caricature"

  • I animated the middle part of the video first, then the start, and then the end of it, so with that, it's glaringly obvious I gave up after a while. That said, it's a little funny to look at; it's as if the type of ball changes. I think I went a little overboard with the exaggeration of the squash when the ball meets the ground, so it looks more like a water balloon.

  • Interestingly enough, before I'd half-given up on it, I was re-drawing the ball each time (for the record, drawn on 2s) which, I think, adds to its squishy illusion or better suggests what type of mass it has. However, by the end, I just duplicated the drawings in Toon Boom and rotated it which I noticed, consequently, gave it the impression of a harder object, more like a boulder

  • I am straight up blaming my tools for this one.


Hooray for Cintiqs and tablet monitors that actually co-operate!

  • No matter how much I try to stay on top of it, I seem to find it very difficult to maintain the volume, especially while trying to ensure I'm implementing enough Squash and Stretch in the animation. This is easy enough to fix digitally, however. It can be hard to see properly until it's rendered and sometimes I need to step away from the animation for a while because it's easy to become "blind" to it, so to speak. This would have happened a lot with editing films in my undergrad; you'd need a fresh set of eyes after a while because there's only so long you can stare at the screen for.


Back to using the Cintiq. Work in progress at this stage; need to work on timing as it floats in mid-air too long.

  • So, so much easier when I'm able to actually look at the surface I'm also drawing on (with a Cintiq);

  • Halfway finished, but it's already so much better. After how the previous animation experiment turned out when I saw what happened when I got lazy halfway through, I decided to just persevere and keep redrawing each frame (well, drawn on 2s but still), so the object type is consistent (i.e., doesn't unintentionally turn into a different type of ball mid-way through, e.g. from a water balloon to a boulder), plus I really like the boiling lines effect. That said...

  • ...the squiggle lines can make the object's volume seem a lot more inconsistent than it actually is, or it emphasises or highlights that particular error. I know that the boiling line effect is certainly supposed to be one that embraces artist imperfections, however, I only want that to a certain degree because, again, the volume inconsistency is now figuratively screaming in your face;

  • I need to fix the stretch just before the ball hits surface; it seems to blink too much, though I wonder if that's more to do with how rough the drawings are at this stage. It's still something to keep in mind. Additionally, I think I also need to be very, very careful with the exaggeration here. Timing for Animation (just check this; it might be the 12 Principles video blogs that actually mention it; possibly as well as, but do make sure to check) notes that it's very easy to overdo it. In this case, I can see that the ball is very dangerously going into water balloon territory again with how squishy (blobby? wobbly? ) it gets at certain intervals; it is bouncy but firm, unlike a water balloon which is most certainly not firm;

  • I made it so the ball hovers in the air for a bit when it's at its apex, but I may have overdone it - I think it stays in the air for just a frame too long, so I'll have to look into that;

  • Refer to Timing for Animation, the section Single Frames or Double Frames? Ones or Twos? from page 52: "the faster the action the more necessary it is to use single frames. In slow action, consecutive drawings are fairly close and the eye has no difficulty in jumping from one to the next", but especially How Long to Hold? on page 54: "How long is it mechanically possible for the object to hold? How long is it necessary to hold to give the best dramatic effect?" and then goes on to explain how the more realistic the drawing, a "moving hold is desirable", otherwise it will look "frozen to the audience", so as long as the design of the subjects are "more graphic and stylised, then a long hold is more believable" - so perhaps the ball isn't too bad while floating in mid-air, but still look into revising it;

  • I'd already realised this before, but the more I look at it while working on it, the more it looks like it's growing. This is a huge negative but I still find it funny. That said, in all of the reference footage including the one I'm using for this exercise, the ball does roll further into the foreground so, technically speaking, I could be forgiven for making it larger in this case. There needs to be reason for breaking rules, and this is one of them. The rest of the time the ball changes its volume, however, is not good!

  • There are about five impacts that the ball makes when it bounces. The first bounce was fast, but it quickly loses momentum, and each bounce after it has a lot less space between them, nor do they leave the ground very far. The second bounce is super slow in comparison to the rest. The final impact has the ball slowly rolling around once all power from the initial force has been used up

  • When the ball rolls from side to side, it seems to come to an almost complete halt before it changes its direction:

Just before the ball changes direction during its roll, I've exposed the drawing for twice the amount of frames (on 4s for this instance)

  • For context, I've been animating on 2s for this exercise. For the Overlapping Action, I'm animating the ball rolling a bit post-bounces while it loses the last of its momentum. I noted how the ball in the reference footage I recorded almost seems to stop just before it changes direction, so I doubled this particular frames exposure, so it's on 4s instead of 2s like the rest

  • Just while we're here, I gave up on conveying the Squash and Stretch about halfway through, so the ball is currently looking a little mechanical. This is only temporary though, because I was getting fed up with losing the volume, so I'll fix it up later. Especially after when I'll be able to see it all together and figure out exactly the best approach


Balls a roll, a roll, a roll

  • Needs more in-between frames I think; it looks really odd. It suddenly stretches out a lot when there needs to be a lot more Easing In and Easing Out. Revise this principle for this exercise; I think that's what's really hindering it as well

  • I was really worrying that, during the roll, the ball would just look as if it was gliding across the terrain. It hasn't really done that though, so that's good. I wonder if the boiling lines effect helps with that at all

  • Watch your Arcs here as well. It's stationed too long in the air near its apex but it also doesn't Arc very well; it nearly looks like it just zips across in mid air as opposed to arcing around, which is exactly what the ball does in the video reference footage. This can be done to a funny effect, but the overall animation doesn't have that vibe, so it just looks odd and out of place


It looks like it floats in the air a lot, so I may have put in too many drawings

  • It wouldn't be so bad if the ball was getting nearer and farther away and I was intentionally looking to achieve that effect, or I wanted to convey that the ball is indeed growing in size, but I'm still awful at maintaining the volume!!

  • The Follow Through is very tricky to get just right; the Timing is a little off at some points at the end, so it ends up looking a bit strange;

  • It looks like it's as light as a feather because of how it seems to float, but then other parts contradict that notion with how blocky or boulder-like it behaves

  • The roll right at the end looks really weird. I'm animating this frame by frame, so I don't if it's the lack of real direction or planning I've put into it. Apart from using the video reference footage, I'm mostly winging this

  • It looks super mechanical without any decent Squash and Stretch, but I already know I need to add that in when cleaning it up

  • I mean, it's still a lot better than the first couple of attempts, so I'm at least getting somewhere with it. Certainly paying a lot more attention with the Timing, which is evidently incredibly important for creating something convincing. It also goes hand-in-hand with the Follow Through principle

  • It's really, really easy for your eyes to become glazed over if you've been working on it for too long. It can be difficult to see what's wrong with it and to see exactly what's happening until you see the full piece in motion, where you can clearly see how all the frames are working together. Sometimes not for the better, but that's just a part of the trial and error process, and you can't learn effectively if you don't make any mistakes after all

  • I'm going to make a new one from scratch. Just simple and basic. Taking into account with more consideration towards Ease In, Ease Out. I really enjoy Animator Island TV's videos for how bitesize and, not "simplistic" per sé, but I find them very easy for me to understand. It helps me come back down from over-complicating things, so that's why I'm going to give it another go, but rather take on the exercise bit by bit. I think a lot of the time when trying it, I was trying to race myself a lot and, for the most part, drew it as I went along even if I did have an idea of what was to happen in my head. Toon Boom never seemed to like it either, and I'd always end up confused if I confused the software somewhere along the way too, and it's an all around frustrating sequence of events;

  • Regarding the video footage I'd taken of various bouncing balls as first hand research, I drew out the Arcs over the video using Adobe Premiere's video effect features, as well as noting some of the Squash and Stretch, despite its subtlety in real life. The Arcs also act as a "trajectory" for the ball, which are a good idea to start off with in sketch form so that you know what path the animated bouncing ball should take, which should prevent confusion later on.


Planning out the trajectory/arcs, and he apex and key points of impact for the bouncing ball animation, now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing. Side by side with the first hand video research I took.

  • Planning it out this time with a clear visual of the trajectory of the bouncing ball, and ensuring there is appropriate Ease In, Ease Out consideration as well so the ball doesn't appear to float when it shouldn't be

  • I want to add as well that I'm using my geriatric 12-year-old drawing tablet with no monitor, which is a challenge in and of itself



"Fail to plan, plan to fail" - this is working out so much better now, now that I'm properly utilising my first hand research and drawing out the trajectory and arcs instead of going for it and hoping for the best

It's looking SO much better now. I was being very careful with the Ease In, Ease Out animation principle which, as evidenced in the exercise here, it aids the Timing and believability of the weight of the ball tremendously. There's still some jerky motions in the middle of it and when it impacts the wall (may need to add another frame just before it squashes against the wall and another just after it bounces off so it eases in and out better and more authentically) but, for the most part, it's coming along much better.

I know I need to fix it with an extra in between so it doesn't simply appear to "jump" to the next pose, and so it doesn't go as fast as it is, but working primarily with a Pose to Pose approach as opposed to Straight Ahead (and essentially "winging it") also proves for a better and more accurate piece.


Some of the Squash and Stretch needs revised, most notably when the ball hits the wall, as it appears to be just a bit too exaggerated and there may need to be another drawing just before it hits the wall as, once again, it's a little jerky.


The Arcs are too "pointy"; they need to actually arc; this is making it look quite mechanical. I might have been following my live action references a little too closely...

This animation exercise was created using 2s.




I'm going to call this one done. It's rough, but that's fine. By no means perfect, but even after this module is done and dusted, there is never any harm in coming back to this exercise to keep honing my skills and perfecting the bouncing ball exercise. I'm brand new to animation in a practical sense and, from what I've learned and read from various animators and storyboard artists - or artists in general - you never truly stop learning. Every day is a school day.


And with that, I'm gonna bounce to the next post to... Embrace Flour-y Language.


List of reference material:
[May need tidied or amended]

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