In this tutorial we create a 2d animation of a bouncing ball using the grease pencil tool in Blender 2.77.
Written version:
In this video we learn the basics of animating with grease pencil by creating a bouncing ball animation.
Let’s begin by deleting the default cube. We can switch to the grease pencil tab in the tools panel and let’s also create a new grease pencil layer in the properties panel. We’ll name it ground.
Now we can start drawing with grease pencil by holding down the d key. This will be our ground plane.
Let’s add a second layer and switch it to the top. This will contain the ball that we are animating.
We’ll switch to front view and start drawing the ball by holding down “d”.
The onion skinning feature here let’s you see the state of the animated object in earlier and later frames to help guide your animation.
Now let’s enable editing so that we can move our drawing. We’ll box select it with b, and move it with g.
After we have accepted a new location for the ball by left clicking, we can move into the next frame with the right arrow key and move the ball again.
While placing the ball pay attention to the spacing. The more space you leave relative to the previous position, the faster your ball is moving.
For the contact position we can use the new stroke sculpt tools to give the ball a squash and stretch effect. You can do the sculpting by holding down “e”.
For the lift off position we can copy and paste the ball from a frame where it’s more round, and then give it some stretch. Now we’ll simply repeat the same steps. So we are just moving the ball with g, and changing the frame with the right arrow.
Let’s go to object mode and preview our animation so far.
That’s it for the basic technique. We won’t make you sit through the rest of the animation because it’s simply repeating the previous steps.
We might use the sculpt thickness tool to make it a bit thicker. Here is the final animation.
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