Assignment #2 Bouncy Ball

This here <-- is the ascii art ball I created that you see in the video.

Before I give my “recipe” on how I got the final product, I feel the need to explain a few things. First, I knew that I personally could not create a bouncy ball in Maya with very little mouse clicks. Before today (1/27) I was completely oblivious to MEL script. That being said, I was quite intrigued about using ASCII art for the project. I tried to just use ASCII in Photoshop, but I just couldn’t figure it out quite right. So, instead, I created an ASCII ball in its own picture and manipulated the picture in a new picture. (Just a note: the image in the top right corner is a light bulb, the ball goes flat at the end because it popped on the glass.)

I also preset a few different keying aspects in Photoshop before starting (ctrl + . =scale; ctrl + , =distort; ctrl + / =rotate. Each of these affects the picture by one pixel). This is important if anyone wanted to use my “recipe” to recreate it.

The last thing I want to note is my biggest problem. I was able to put the 86 pictures I made in Photoshop into Premiere, but each picture took up 5 seconds each (far too long to make it look like the ball was bouncing). I initially tried to shorten each picture, but that proved to be a futile effort. Eventually, I just rendered out the long sequence (over 7 minutes) and re-entered it into Premiere as one long video, then shortening that one video.

Here’s the “recipe”

• open Photoshop
• ctrl + N --> open new picture size 200 x 200 pixels
• t à start typing new area
• type in ASCII soccer ball
• ctrl + shift + S --> save as “ball"

• ctrl + N --> opens new picture size 600 x 550 pixels
• t --> start new typing area
• type in ASCII light bulb

• in “ball”- M --> rectangle marquee tool, select whole picture
• ctrl + C --> copy

• click on larger picture
• ctrl + V --> paste ball into pic
• V --> move tool
• click and move ball to upper area (starting it off screen)
• ctrl + , --> to distort (using arrow keys); to make longer or more squat if falling or hitting ground
• ctrl + shift + S --> save as
• repeat last 4 steps for each new picture needed in slideshow
• once ball has bounced: ctrl + / --> rotate (using arrow keys)

• open Premiere
• ctrl + alt + N --> new project
• ctrl + alt + O --> browse in Brdige, find folder all pictures are stored in
• ctrl + A -->select all pictures
• use mouse to move to Premiere imported area
• , -->will import all into editing bay
• enter--> renders entire work area
• ctrl + alt + E --> export
• Encore will open (automatically)--> press “start queue”

• (in Premiere) ctrl+ alt+ N--> new project
• click import, select long movie
• , --> import into editing bay
• use tool to squish movie to 5 seconds
• enter --> render work area
• ctrl + alt + E --> export
• start queue and save

If anyone wants this in a nice PDF format, let me know and I will email it to y0u.