3-D Pinball animation and evaluation

Below is my animation, now it will seem very simple, because it is, I will go into the reasons below but enjoy.

First off I will just evaluate the animation above, before explaining why I changed my idea and what went wrong the 1st time.

So for the pinball animation, besides the constant changing in speed, I still think it looks fairly believable and for a "first" attempt at animation I dont think its too bad, the environment reacts to the ball and at the right speed. However it is a little janky and in areas it just looks daft, like at the beginning how the ball auto curves.

There isnt really much moreI can say about other than how it is completely outclassed by the rest of the class, but there is a reason for that. To begin with I was creating an animation, where my 3-D ship model would fly around do a few tricks before crashing through a building using the reactor engine in 3-D max. However all was going smoothly after around 7 hours of animating the ship and getting reactor ready, there was only one thing left to do before It was finished and that was give my ship mass; however what I did not know is that this had to be done much eariler on, maybe even during the ships creation, therefore since the ship had no mass it couldnt break the wall. It was basically 7 hours of wasted work and in my frustration I just deleted it.

Now in hindsite, this was a really bad idea, even if it didnt work it still could have been marked and given me a basic grade for the ships animation alone, but I then had to start again, re-planning and re-working with little time left, hence the brief animation above.

The biggest thing I learnt here is that I needed to focus from the start, manage my time better, and improve on my mistakes and not just throw them away.

Looking at the proffessional example below, it looks like I have a long way to go. (Video from Might and Magic heros VI) enjoy.