Wow, this assignment was much tougher than I was expecting. The lesson I learned here is timing and spacing is EVERYTHING.

As you can see the ball is moving left to right in increasingly smaller arcs. The change in position of the ball along the arc frame by frame is what gives the illusion of weight and gravity. At the top of the arc the ball moves slower, they are closer together, because the energy pushing the ball up is losing to pull of gravity. As the ball begins to fall again, it picks up speed so the spacing becomes further and further apart. The bounce has a lot of energy which carries the ball upward quickly again, so spacing is still far apart, then it begins to slow once again due to gravity. At the same time, the motion left to right is also slowing over time until it rolls to a stop at the end.

The difficult part in this is finding that right about of distance the ball travels to give that constant and consistent motion. If you are off just a little bit, then the ball appears to hang or jump and its very noticeable. I had to redo this one a couple of times to get it right. It still isn't perfect, but the illusion is achieved and at some point you just have to move forward.