'Little and Large': Throw Animation

This particular animation took me a while to get right. Perhaps it should not have taken as long as it did, but I am pleased with the results nevertheless:

I began the animation by having my Lego man drop his arms and throw the beach ball to the ground. I figured this would look nicer than trying to have my character throw the ball in the air, his arms being so tight to his body. Probably the hardest part was getting the right hang time at the top of each bounce as I keyed  each frame by hand. Looking back perhaps I could have utilized the graph editor for the balls motion, drawing the path inside the graph editor window instead of hand keying it along the timeline. I will try this when I animate the regular sized ball rolling in to the second shot. Perhaps the most tedius part of the animation was keying in the rotation of the ball. As I did not do this as I went along, I had to go back, rotate the ball, write down it's current coordinates , apply these coordinates to the next frame, rotate the ball some more, write down the new coordinates for the next frame and so on. The squash deformer was quiet nice to use. I had the ball squash each time it hit the ground, stretch out as it bound in the air and then rotate on release. I also had the arms swing after throwing the ball, keeping the follow through animation principle in mind.