Tom Engelhardt walks through an animation exercise to help train your eye to identify arcs and spacing in animations.

Freelance animator Tom Engelhardt shares a method that he uses to help train his eye to see arcs and spacing in animations, using a simple bouncing ball exercise. “I walk you through an animation exercise you can do to help train your eye to see arc and spacing better,” Engelhardt says.

The test involves animating a bouncing ball using the straight-ahead method and on the two’s, without the help of arc trackers or the graph editor. “Also, you can use this method to explore and try to feel what your character feels,” Engelhardt says. Animation always seems to come down to the bouncing ball.