How are the squash and stretch of an object determined?
kevintli
The distortions in the lamp example make sense since it's trying to break its fall during the jump. However, in the bouncing ball example, are the distortions meant to be physically accurate or are they only used in animation in order to create the appearance of "bounciness"? I'm having a hard time imagining how a real-life ball would stretch to become longer before hitting the ground, although I might be wrong because I haven't tried looking at one in slow motion before...
AlbertScribblenaut
Although this phenomenon may seem like an exaggeration, this animation principle can be reflected in real life in slow motion footage.
NKJEW
@ananthmrao I believe the direction of the squashing is meant to theoretically stay in line with the direction of motion (so the longer an object is along an axis, the faster it's moving in that direction). Otherwise though it's probably a lot of subjectivity and artistic insight.
tlswoo
This reminds me of those Post-It note animations we used to draw years ago. The fact that these principles are adhered to in some full-length animated films, and that most if not all frames are hand drawn, really makes me appreciate the time and effort going into these movies that much more.
nobugnohair
Great example of the Pixar lamp. I have always wondered why its jumps looks so vivid with only three joints.
melodysifry
It's interesting how depicting the shape of the object to be changing as it moves makes the animation more realistic and dynamic in our eyes, but in real life, this changing of shape doesn't actually happen. This implies that when creating animations, it's more important to capture the way that we perceive movements to happen rather than the way they actually happen in real life. If this is the case, I wonder how we figure out how we perceive a movement to happen from the information we have- in early animations I'm sure it was just through trial and error, but are we still operating on those early conclusions drawn from trial and error (like that a ball stretching in shape before reaching the ground looks realistic), or do we have a more sophisticated way of deducing this now?
How are the squash and stretch of an object determined?
The distortions in the lamp example make sense since it's trying to break its fall during the jump. However, in the bouncing ball example, are the distortions meant to be physically accurate or are they only used in animation in order to create the appearance of "bounciness"? I'm having a hard time imagining how a real-life ball would stretch to become longer before hitting the ground, although I might be wrong because I haven't tried looking at one in slow motion before...
Although this phenomenon may seem like an exaggeration, this animation principle can be reflected in real life in slow motion footage.
@ananthmrao I believe the direction of the squashing is meant to theoretically stay in line with the direction of motion (so the longer an object is along an axis, the faster it's moving in that direction). Otherwise though it's probably a lot of subjectivity and artistic insight.
This reminds me of those Post-It note animations we used to draw years ago. The fact that these principles are adhered to in some full-length animated films, and that most if not all frames are hand drawn, really makes me appreciate the time and effort going into these movies that much more.
Great example of the Pixar lamp. I have always wondered why its jumps looks so vivid with only three joints.
It's interesting how depicting the shape of the object to be changing as it moves makes the animation more realistic and dynamic in our eyes, but in real life, this changing of shape doesn't actually happen. This implies that when creating animations, it's more important to capture the way that we perceive movements to happen rather than the way they actually happen in real life. If this is the case, I wonder how we figure out how we perceive a movement to happen from the information we have- in early animations I'm sure it was just through trial and error, but are we still operating on those early conclusions drawn from trial and error (like that a ball stretching in shape before reaching the ground looks realistic), or do we have a more sophisticated way of deducing this now?