Here’s an little animation exercise from back in 2020. At this point in my animation journey, I really wanted to go back to the basics. Pretty soon after I revisited the classic “bouncing ball” exercise, I gave this one a try. Animating a tail is an excellent way to practice the principles of follow-though and overlap.

Follow-through is the idea that objects that are connected to the subject may continue to move even after the subject has come to a stop. Think of someone waving a flag pole. If they suddenly stop moving the pole, the flag will continue to whip around briefly before also coming to a stop. It’s a bit subtle in this animation, but notice how the tail and ears continue to move as the squirrel reaches its point of rest.

Overlap is the idea that different parts of the subject will move at different rates. This is much more noticeable in this animation. The squirrel’s body leads the action here, while the tail and ears trail behind. Even the head has a slight delay, rotating in reaction to the movement of the main body.

There’s also another animation principle that features heavily here; Arcs. Objects in motion tend to follow some sort of arc. From the movement of your hand to the bouncing of a basketball, arcs are EVERYWHERE. Animation Mentor’s Squirrels rig is basically a slightly misshapen ball, so I created the same arcs I would when animating a bouncing ball. I had the tail follow those arcs but with a slight delay.

Having the tail follow the arc of the body was really tricky. Maya’s interpolation between my set keyframes had left a lot to be desired. So I ended up animating the whole tail on 1s, meaning a keyframe for every frame. This way I was able to carefully shape the tail to match the arcs one frame at a time. There’s definitely more efficient ways of doing this, but at the time it really made me think about how exactly the tail should react to both the character’s body and itself.

Squirrels Rig by Animation Mentor

My Links: ArtStation / Instagram / Vimeo