More Overlap

I've finally decided to get to work on the ball with tail animation. The last post is with the ball drawn in Flipbook, but I wanted to be able to make it in Maya. The problem was that the rig had some problems that were driving me crazy, such as the squash and stretch and the tail rotations; they didn't work well together.

So 1 month ago I decided I would try to make it, but I made like 3 attempts and they sucked really bad. I was having a lot of trouble animating the tail but the ball itself was also giving me a hard time. I should also say that I was being too ambitious with the animations, they were too hard to make as your first animation with overlap.

After the failed attempts, I decided to leave that animation aside for some time and I came up with a new idea. The idea for the animation was to show what a ball was feeling, just a simple sphere with a ring as a rig. The plan was to make it look sad and make another that was really excited, and I've done the sad one already. My next animation will probably be the excited one or a more complex test of the ball with the tail.

I will post all the animations I have been doing these month, the ball with tail animation and the sad ball one. I also made a little test in FlipBook after watching a Jason Ryan tutorial on his website which I'll post. Oh and for the ball with tail animation, I will post 2 videos, one has a lot of overlap and the other has a lot less. Finally I'd like to thank everyone who gave me critiques on these animations, they were really helpful!


TIPS! Here are some helpful things I have learnt in this month:

1º- If it's the first time you are animating a ball with a tail, I suggest you don't use squash and stretch. On the 3 failed attempts I did before, I tried using squash and stretch until a friend told me not to do so at first so that it would be easier. I suggest you only move the ball across the screen and up and down and just use rotation. You can try adding squash and stretch after you have finished animating everything, but it's better to make your first tests without it.

Also, tails don't really overlap much on animals. If you look at reference of a squirrel or a fox running, the tail won't overlap a lot, the tip and the last joints just move a bit. Take a look at the tail from Scrat on Ice Age and you will see that it doesn't move much.

Here are some helpful links!

FlyingFox Rig: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/flyingfox--2

Jason Ryan Ramp-Up Tutorials: http://jrawebinar.com/index.php/resources/ramp-up-tutorials.html

Well thats it! Here are the animations.


Ball with tail animation


The same one, but with less overlap


The Sad Ball


Flipbook Overlap Test


Thanks for Reading!


Jero