Thank you for responding so fast Conceit!
I looked for reference, but I don't know the exact name of the trick, and rolling ball on shoulders didn't come up with any good results. Also I looked for some globetrotter stuff while I was doing the animation but there are many videos and I can't be sure which video the trick shows up in. The only reference I found was this video, right at the start
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4-pdvcMJAU&NR=1 that is the reference I used, at least for some of it anyway. I realize that this may actually be impossible in real life so I tried to make it as best as I could.
Furthermore even though I'm trying to be economic with the frames I do want the animation to read well.
As for making the ball pop up, yes I suppose I could give it a try. I imagine it will look like when you roll something towards the middle of your bent arm then pop your arm straight so that it will pop back to your hand.
(edit)
This early version of the animation has more frames, just thought I would put it here and maybe get a comparison and see which is better. It seems that when I get closer to completion on an animation it becomes a bit rigid. Oh and the arm is up higher in this version but for later versions I had to take into account the smallest enemy I would be using. So I had to angle his arm down some more.