Bowling ball drop footage

Getting hold of and dropping a bowling ball myself isn't really too practical, so I've been poking around online. Fortunately it's a fairly basic exercise in animation so there's plenty of pretty clear reference footage to use!

It's quite interesting to note how the ball rolls after being dropped in one video, but not in the other. I'm guessing it's because in the first video the ball is given more of a push forward as it's being dropped, whereas in the second it's simply released with his fingers and so drops straight down.

It's a bit difficult to determine the height from which it's dropped, but I wouldn't think it's much more than a metre. The ball hits the floor quite quickly but doesn't seem to accelerate as fast as the tennis ball - it actually seems to have quite a steady rate of motion. It hits the ground after about 10 frames - the same as the tennis ball - and bounces just once or twice (the second bounce is tiny, the ball barely leaves the floor) before rolling away.

I'll probably do a couple of different versions - one without the roll, and one with the roll, to see what looks best.