Post #9 Ease in Ease Out

I've started working on the Wacom tablets properly now - unfortunately I couldn't put it off any further as we need to start working on Flash animation. I really hate using the Wacoms for anything complex, but for simple things (very simple things!) they can be quite useful.

This time we were practicing the 'ease in, ease out' principal of animation. This is basically having objects and characters gradually come to stop rather than having things bounce around too quickly where it looks unpleasing to the eye. Sometimes this happens in reality (as you can see with the pendulum), but other times it just looks more pleasing to have things gradually stop or change direction rather than a sudden change (as with the bouncing ball).

For an 'ease in, ease out' you need to animated more frames closer together at the start of a movement and at the end of the movement.

For example, in the bouncing ball animation above, there are five frame almost on top of each other near the  start of the movement. Then in the middle of the movement the frames are more spread out, before they begin to overlap again just before the first bounce. Also, before the ball hits the ground, instead of a simple circular shape, the ball changes to a more oval shape in order to give the ball a stretchy/bouncy look.