Critique Day: Tennis Ball
Today was Critique Day This was the final version that I went with for my class. As I watched it for the last few times before putting it into the Dropbox, I started to get this honest sense of dread. I was beginning to feel anxious and seeing more and more mistakes in the animation. But I just waved it all away and submitted it. Because at that point, there wasn't any time to go in and change it all. Not to mention, how dark it turned out. There are new cameras and a new setup in the lab so everyone was apparently having trouble getting it to look alright as well.
For the actual critique, I would say that it was as good as I thought it was. And by that I mean: not very good. But surprisingly, I wasn't shocked or even slightly hurt by this. I was really pleased with the critique. My professor didn't really have anything positive to say, but that was fine. He was very quick and straight forward with his words. I copied down everything he told me to fix on it and I actually feel a lot better about it. I was feeling so loss in the process of making this animation, but now that I've been told what to fix and given some sense of guidance, I feel a lot better and I feel really motivated to take the time to go fix it. (as I should). I have the opportunity for a redo and I'm going to make time to do it.
Some things surprised me. I had believed I'd gotten a much better eye for animation, but there were things that I wouldn't have saw as a problem even on other people's work. One thing is, I think that I may have over-referenced. My professor told me that the ball needed to be bouncing higher. My first action plan had much higher bounces, but when I watched a video of a tennis ball bouncing, I was surprised at how the ball bounced significantly lower than the original drop. So that's how I decided to animate it. However, my professor talked a lot about how we really REALLY shouldn't be thinking so much about the reference because it doesn't look right translated into 2D. We should watch it enough to get an idea of a realistic bouncing ball, but don't try to mimic it precisely.
I ended up getting a B for this project. So not terrible. But after my experience in Action Analysis last quarter, I feel confident that I can get an A by the end of this class. This being the first assignment, it can only get better as long as I work at it. And I definitely feel like I can improve my grade on this animation itself.
