Enter week two of the course! Here things switched from week one’s emphasis around theory, to getting hands-on with the practical. Not implying ‘theory’ to ‘practical’ means a decrease in thinking. Quite far from it – we had to put more mental effort into each animation this week. That thought centred around the idea that life moves in arcs. Easy to grasp, right? In storytelling characters undergo arcs, taking them from one point in their life along to another. Animation has a different meaning for this concept. It is about the trajectory things have when moving through space.

Let’s start to understand this with pendulum swings. In this diagram an object creates an imaginary curved path when it moves, (starting from point 1 and ending at point 5). That is literally the object’s arc:

Williams, R. (2009). The Animator’s Survival Kit (Rev. ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

In this diagram, see how a bouncing ball also has an arc from moving:

Williams, R. (2009). The Animator’s Survival Kit (Rev. ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The path and speed of these arcs will be influenced by the weight an object has. Below is my second exercise for the course. Several animation tests exploring arcs: