Flipbooks Part I

The flipbook first appeared in the 19th century under the name kineograph, meaning 'moving picture'. They work by quickly scrolling through a series of still images placed or drawn on the pages of the same book. Flicking through the pages quickly gives the illusion that the images are moving. Although they are now considered quite novelty, they still serve a purpose in the Animation industry and are often used to test animation pieces during the pre-production process as a method of envisioning the motion picture before it's made. Flipbooks were key in the birth of cinema, and acted as one of the very first  types of animation that was available and that anyone could utilise.

Before this session I'd never before made a flipbook of my own, so I was quite intrigued and looking forward to the process and learning more about them as a fundamental tool in animation making. However, even though I'd never before made a flipbook I understood how they worked and the basic idea of how to create my own. There was quite a lot of technique to making one that I hadn't realised before this session however. 

The first animation we were set to create using the flipbook technique was the 'bouncing ball' (using a reference of Richard William's bouncing ball). A ball that falls from a point towards the ground, and bounced back upwards. There were a number of technicalities and principles to consider when planning

Richard William's 'Bouncing Ball' Example

this particular animation, principles in both a physical and animation sense. Firstly, when the ball falls from a point it starts out from a point of equilibrium and therefore would be stationary for a brief moment and have to build momentum as it fell. In order to communicate this in the animation, the initial drawings in the separate frames would have to be close together so the illusion of the ball moving slowly to start was created. Then, as the ball fell and the velocity of the ball increased the drawings of the ball would be more spread out demonstrating the speed of the ball, to add to this the shape of the ball would be slightly stretched for a moment until the point it hit the ground. Once the ball comes into contact with the ground it would compress and squash whilst keeping the same volume before decompressing and bouncing back upwards. When the ball bounced upwards it is important to remember that physics dictates it can't bounce higher than the point it fell, due to a loss of energy.

Here is the bouncing ball flipbook animation I produced, there is a number of things that could be improved about it since it my first attempt and in places isn't accurate to how it should appear. 
The most noticeably wrong with the animation is that the ball doesn't increase in velocity as it falls, it stays at a uniform speed and as it hits the ground. Then as it bounces back up from the ground the speed of the ball actually increases, this is not representative of what would happen in the real world and therefore for the purposes of this animation which is an exercise in applying animation and physical principles to an animation is wrong and should be fixed. I will make sure to keep this in mind when I create my next animation flipbook.  

My Attempt at the 'Bouncing Ball'