Animation is only ever two decisions repeated: how long something takes, and where it sits in every frame along the way. Everything else on this sheet is a refinement of those two.

Deformation tells the audience what the ball is made of and how hard it hit. The critical rule is volume: whatever you take off the height you add to the width, or the ball looks like it is inflating and deflating instead of being squashed. Traditional animators will squash and stretch skulls to push the storytelling. With luck that won't happen to any of us, but squashing and stretching will make a huge difference to how believable and pleasing your animation is.

Arcs and curves are huge for animation. In traditional animation they're used to bring life to movement. Just as we've seen that spacing shouldn't be linear, movement shouldn't either. Most things will have an arc to them, even a bullet, since gravity will push it down.

In 3D animation, curves become a part of the animation process. You should have as few keyframes as possible, and control the movement between them with curves. Hit Enable tangents below, which will give you handles you can use to sculpt out the movement of the ball between the keyframes and give it a nice smooth arc.

What happened before you clicked on this cheat sheet? Most people squeal with expectation. That's anticipation. What are you going to do afterwards? Most people leave a glowing Trustpilot review. That's reaction, or follow through. How will you feel for the rest of the day? Wibbly. That's settling.

Most movements need anticipation, follow through and settle. If you want to jump, you'll do the opposite movement first: instead of going up, you bend your legs and go down. Anticipation. When you land, you'll bend your legs to absorb the shock, or snap your knees and collapse to the ground. Either way, that's the follow through. Then you might need an extra step to soak up more energy, or a painkiller if you smashed your knees. That's the settle.

Enough fun. Time to lay down your own keyframes. For your first pass you'll probably want a guide. Pick a ball, then place each key as you are prompted and see the reason for it. Once you've spent some time on that, switch over to The Lab, just to remind yourself that in 3D you can also simulate animation. Which is better? It depends on the task. Animation wins hands down for directability, and simulation wins every time at scale. It's very normal to combine the two: block in simple animation, and use simulation over the top for nuance.