Arcs / Timing / Secondary animation / Exaggeration - Pinball Obstacle Course animation

Objects move in an arc path or slight curved path; humans, animals, characters, etc. It is usually mechanical objects which move in a straight path.

Body parts always move in arcs or curved paths; the weight is transferred in the body parts and limbs have limited ranges of movement due to their skeleton. Moving our animations in this way means that the animation will be more natural and believable to the viewer. 

Here is my obstacle course animation, as you can see by looking at the trajectory displayed, the ball follows a path of curves and arcs. The curves and arcs in the ball's path shows that it will move in a realistic and natural way. 

Trajectory turned on

On my follow through animation, the pendulum has a more of a mechanic feel to it because the platform moves in straight lines without any curves.

'Secondary Animation' is having an additional animation or action along side the main animation. The idea is to make the primary animation more effective. To make a secondary animation work well, it needs to support the primary animation. Once the primary animation is working well, the animator can then work on the secondary one. 

In my pendulum animation, the ball swinging about under the box is the secondary animation for the scene as it follows the moving box adding in some exaggeration and weight to the object. 

'Timing' is an important part of animation, it would look wrong if the timing was off and can end up making things look unrealistic if it's not timed correctly. 

The key frames need to be spaced correctly and timed at the right times. Timing of a bouncing ball can change the perceived physics and weight of the floor or the ball that is bouncing. 

With my bouncing balls animation, I was able to create the affect of different weights by changing the timing of each ball so that there was the illusion of there being a heavier ball. 

'Exaggeration' is where the animator will use extreme distortion of the character or object to create a more interesting look to the animation.

When creating a realistic animation, things will be done more subtly; in a cartoon or comic though things will be more exaggerated to get across what is happening.

Here in my bouncing balls collision animation I squash the ball on the left to exaggerate the impact of the ball before it bounces back up off the ground.