Timing in animation

Jeff Price was nice enough to give me 4 books on animation in PDF form- So I started reading the first one, Mechanics of Motion by Chris Webster

After reading about 40 pages in, I realized how much more I needed to pay attention to science class in high school - Animators are trying to imitate life after all, and several rules of science were brought to my attention

The bigger an object is, the more force is takes to get it going then inertia kicks in and keeps it going until it encounters resistance, such as friction (a bouncing ball loses energy and has lower arcs as it hits the ground more times) - Also, large objects have more momentum than small objects and therefore take more force to stop

I also learned the difference between straight-ahead animation and pose-to-pose animation - I should have used the pose-to-pose method in animating my backflipping guy if I wanted to prevent his shrinking and changing proportions

Straight-ahead= draw each frame in order

Pose-to-pose= draw the keyframes and then add the inbetweens

Each has its advantages and disadvantages; pose-to-pose is more structured and will help keep consistent sizes and proportions, while straight-ahead gives you more freedom in animating.  Also, pose-to-pose is helpful to animators because if they want to affect the timing, they can add frames between the keyframes more easily

Also, the book brought to my attention the fact that the greater the distance between the same object in two frames, the faster it appears to be moving - If the object is a small distance away in the next frame it appears to be moving more slowly

I tested it out really quickly in Photoshop-

Every time the ball arcs, I added three frames of the ball close to each other then when it fell, I only drew 2 frames- the ball really close to hitting the floor and the ball hitting the floor:

I rested it again on a guy running and hitting a wall (I don't draw walk/run cycles well yet)

I needed to draw more frames.

 

 I don't think you can see it because it's too fast and I need more frames probably, but

He starts off slow and then gets fast because of the distance

Aaand since I'm just as interested in comics as I am in animation, here's how it applies to comics:

In which sequence does the character seem to speed up more?

 

 OR

 

 I believe the second one (..maybe without that line) looks like it sped up because the distance between the character from the last one is increased by making the panel bigger and placing the character on the right side of it