Squashing the pawn
To give the pawn a comic-like character, it should appear to be soft. When it hits the ground, it must be squashed a little bit. This can be achieved by changing the size of the pawn on frame number 16.
On frame 16, Place the 3D cursor at the base of the object. Enter scale mode and start decreasing the object's size by moving your mouse vertically. Next, click the MiddleButton to indicate that you only want to change the objects Z size.
Change the size to about 0.7 (this value is printed at the bottom of the 3D Window while you are sizing).
To make the squashed pawn look more convincing, it should not only get shorter, but also a bit wider. After all, its volume should remain the same.
Repeat the previous step, but now move the mouse horizontally before you constrain the sizing process. Increase the object's width to 1.3.
Switch to top view and repeat the scaling to increase the object's Ysize to 1.3, too.
To finish this part of the tutorial, insert a new LocRotSize key for frame 16. Take a look at your animation now - did you expect it would be this easy to create elastic-looking objects?
