Hello,
I am making an effect for my showreel brief at university.
I wanted to make a vfx with elements so I decided to go for Avatar and make a earth bending FX.
I am still in the early stages and some feedback would really help me going the correct path.
This is a cool effect to make for your class. My biggest suggestion is dialing in the speed and anticipation. All the speeds feel very similar and it lacks any feeling of weight or power. Anything that is fast/snappy feels more powerful. Study the 12 principals of animation for things like anticipation and slow in/out.
When the sphere moves, the speed at which it moves up and down is roughly the same. There is also no anticipation to the movements. Before it moves up, i would compress it down a bit, as if the sphere was coiling up for the jump. (anticipation) Then launch it up quickly and have it decelerate at the top. (slow in/out) Pause for a brief moment at the top (anticipation) and then have it very quickly slam down, much faster than it moves up. (power) The key is using different speeds to choreograph different things.
The speeds for the various rock elements such as the ground cracking and pillar also feels too linear and similar. If you study some of the earth bender scenes from the avatar cartoon, you will notice that the boulders tend to come out of the ground very fast and decelerate quickly.
I saw this awesome earth bending animation on youtube. It does a great job of giving the sense of power through speed and anticipation.
I really like the feedback u gave me! Thanks alot 
I’ll work hard to improve
Here is the progress so far. I am planning to redo the ground cracking sim before the rock comes out and work a bit more on the animation. after that I will add come camera shake.
