Bowling ball drop V3 & V4

Hooray for Vimeo processing!

Version 3

Here, I've adjusted the timing very slightly so that the ball doesn't take so long to ease into the drop. As a result, the ball enters the frame much earlier. I think this speed's better, but I'm not sure about the bounces. They seem too... "floaty" to me. I can't put my finger on what it is, exactly. I think that the ball drops from the peak of its first bounce a bit too slowly and doesn't seem to have much impact with the ground. It's a heavy object - the drop should probably be quite snappy or choppy to really give it the feeling of weight.

Version 4

I wondered if spacing the ball out would help me to figure out why the bounces look a bit weird. I think they look a little better now; still slightly floaty? I'm not sure if trying to add the roll at this stage was a bad idea - it's easy to get distracted by too much going on. In this case though I think it might help - makes anything that looks off stick out a lot more.

Anyway. I don't think the ball really rolls or moves far enough. If it's going to roll, I think it probably needs to roll properly - if it was dropped straight down it probably wouldn't roll at all, like in the reference video - so it's probably only going to look right if I animate it rolling as if it's been dropped with a bit of a push. If that makes sense.

I think I could make this version work if I were to add just a little more rotation to the ball, but I might experiment with making the bounces and rolling a little more prominent, as if the ball has been dropped with some forward force.