I messed about with placement of the pins for a little bit, but I had an idea!
So after discovering Textures last night, I started fiddling with the Properties tab a little bit more and found Physics. I spent a few hours messing with that and the animator (I’m still not great with the animator by any means, but I used it to my advantage). I gave the pins, the alley floor, and the ball some rigidbody physics. The Bowling Ball was set to Passive Animated, Floor was Passive, and Pins were Active Dynamic, with the Damp settings set to 0.9 and 0.9. Probably get some better results increasing them, but I liked the way this turned out. Anyhow, I set the ball on a pretty linear path from 1 to 60 frames, with the ball being in the middle of the pins by the 40th frame. At frame 44 I paused it, and rendered it. I like the way it looks! And I messed around with more Texture settings to get the ball looking more like a, well, ball… the walls I am not happy with but I hope to learn more about these things I messed around with in the upcoming sections!
Happy blending!