Timing (continued)
For Eases, Anticipations and Overshoots you can also play with offsetting the keys' positions in time or add more keys to shorten or lengthen the effect; up until now I've left the keys in place and focused on value and tangent angle. Now here's a more complex example combining multiple timing solutions. For this example I've added more keys and moved them around in time, but all the previous concepts are still visible. This animation was created entirely within the Graph Editor. The idea is that the ball decides to exit screen right, but is stopped by an invisible wall. This animation is not going to win and Annie, but it goes to show what you can do with one Translate channel and an understanding of splines.
Here's a breakdown of the animation:
- Frames 1-3 - this is a hold, as there is no slope in the spline.
- Frames 4-12 - this is a big anticipation back, and there is key to ease-in to the anticipation on frame 7. This suggests that the ball is "alive", since it appears to plan its next action.
- Frame 12-18 - the ball moves quickly to the right. The slope of the spline is increasing so that the ball is moving fastest just before the collision.
- Frame 18-24 - the ball hits an invisible wall with a fast-in and bounces right back off with a fast out. This use of fasts on both sides of the key suggests that both the ball and the wall are rigid. There is no cushion or absorbing of energy, so there is no ease in the timing.
- Frames 24-33 - the ball bounces off the wall a couple more times, always with a fast-in and out on the contact keys. The increasingly smaller bounces are reflected in the diminishing arcs of the spline.
- Frames 35-38 - the ball stops and holds.
This concludes the basics of timing with splines. Timing is a skill that takes a long time to develop; hopefully these techniques will help you to more easily achieve the timing you want.
