Merlin’s Ball – Entry 5

Here is my fourth pass, on my Merlin ‘s box and ball animation, I’ve converted all my relevant tangent’s to a more appropriate type depending on their purpose. I’ve gone through and tweaked a whole bunch of the curves. I’ve also attempted to deal with the points that were brought up in the previous critiques. I’m hoping to do one more pass before turn-in where I will add in a bit of camera shake when it is impacted by the ball and a bit of animation on the paper attached to the front of the box. I was also wondering specifically if the sprite was working well right now, the path is a bit linear and I was wondering if that might cost me points, I feel like it’s moving fast enough to justify the straight lines, but because of Professor Viviani’s earlier critique,  I’m wondering if it’s not appropriate in this case. Once again I appreciate and value any and all input, or suggestions. Thanks.

Alright this time I have received quite a bit of feedback from AJ Viviani on Conceptshare. Once again I want to say thank you for your input, I find that a bit of input goes a long way in helping to polish and refine my projects. So here are the comments I received.

I might bring the ball up here to make for a cleaner arc.  Of course, if you do this, you might want to also add an extra frame on the way up as the distance it travels will be more, it’ll also speed up the movement, which I feel is already slightly on the fast side. (This comment was in reference to the first jump from the box up to the table top.)

I’d bring the ball up slightly here as well, this jump down feels like a shallow arc, try for the green one.( This comment was in regards to the ball jumping off of the table to the ground.)

Be sure to not only put the tangents in linear, but also break/sharpen them.  You’ll end up with longer hangtime, more explosive jumps/bounces, heavier impacts and rounder arcs!  =)

With this ball, if you go to Animate>ghost selected, you can set a sort of tail on this without having to create a more complex emitter.  =) (In reference to the pinkish sprite that flies around like crazy.)

I’d like to see some of the lid continuing to open slightly after the box lands to emphasize the dissipation of that momentum.( This was in regards to the first impact of the box against the ground after Merlin’s ball rams it towards the shelf.)

The lid should shift a bit here and the box could use a subtle, quick bounce over one frame.( This was in regards to the box hitting the ground after transferring kinetic energy to the shelving apparatus.)

So I went through, and addressed almost all of the issues mentioned above, I reworked my tangents adjusted the height of the ball on some of the jumps and ensured that the box itself was bleeding off energy through the lid a bit more effectively. However when I attempted to apply ghosting to the sprite, the effect was rather confusing, and did not look like a trail in the way I was hoping it would. This may have been because I have the ball moving a bit too fast, but whatever the cause, I wound up leaving the ball un-ghosted.

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