Okay, so I was messing around with some animation stuff, and I had this idea to do something with baseball, specifically MLB. I’ve always loved those highlight reels with crazy graphics, so I thought, “Why not try making my own?”
I started by grabbing some MLB game footage. I figured I needed some good action shots to work with. I spent a good chunk of time just watching games, looking for awesome plays – diving catches, home runs, the works. It’s tough life, right, watching baseball for “research”?
Then came the actual animation part. I’m not gonna lie, it was a bit of trial and error. I used some software that I was familar with, playing with different effects and overlays. I wanted to make it look dynamic and exciting, not just some boring replay.
Key Moments
- The First Homer: Getting the timing right on the bat crack and the ball flying was tricky. I must’ve re-done it like ten times to make it feel impactful.
- Adding Sparkle: I added a little extra effect on it.
- That Diving Catch: This one was tough! I wanted to emphasize the player’s movement, so I experimented with some slow-motion and zoom effects. It took a while to get it looking smooth and not all jerky.
- Sound Effects: Don’t even get me started on the sound! Finding the right “whoosh” and “thwack” sounds was a whole other adventure. I ended up mixing a few different ones together to get that perfect, powerful feel.
After lots of tweaking, deleting, and starting over, I finally had something I was pretty happy with. It wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely cool, and it captured that MLB energy I was going for. I even showed it to a few friends, and they were pretty impressed (or at least they pretended to be!).
The whole process taught me a lot about animation and how much work goes into those fancy sports graphics. It’s definitely something I want to keep playing around with. Maybe next time I’ll tackle football or basketball… or maybe even cricket! Who knows?
