The problem here is that while the short was still being animated, the specific pacing wasn't yet solved – but locking down the feel was hard without first having it animated. Sort of a Sisyphean task, so to speak.

Approach

After some experimentation, we settled on a workflow here that would let the animators animate the stairs and have the ball always sit on top of them.

With this approach, the artists could iterate their animation as much as they wanted, knowing that regardless of the rest, this scene would always Just Work.