I thought of writing a few animation tips with a personal touch. I'm not going to mention the usual suspects, like Anticipations, Overlaps, Lines of Action, Squashes, Stretches, and so on. My focus is on realism/naturalism, but some of these ideas are general enough. Without any further storytelling, here we go! Tips:
1. Think 3D.
Pose 3D. Animate 3D. Even in 2D. Love your Round Curves and Wobbles and Figure 8s. Don't let things go linearly forward on a 2D plane. Move your creature in 3D space, turn it around and twist things and go crazy! Rotate your camera a lot around your main poses, and think of what else could be more dimensional.
2. Consider Dynamic Range.
Don't make everything big. Don't make everything subtle. Consider range and contrast carefully. Big is only big when contrasted with small. And vice versa. Real Life movement is often on the slow side, subtle, and infinitely detailed.. but still has contrast, and can sometimes, not very often, feel really big!
3. Change Stuff.
Retime, Readjust, and Repose. Edit bravely, courageously.. not subtly. Dare to actually change things. Be disrespectful to your animations, don't get married to one or two ideas. If something doesn't work, try something else, don't massage details forever if the animation is not working. Writing is rewriting. Animating is.. uhm.. reanimating?
4. Try Other Ways.
Of animating. No, seriously, I know there aren't many. But if you usually work Pose to Pose, try animating the Spine first, and hide the limbs. If you usually Inbetween a lot, try going straight to Splines, from basic blocking. If you don't limit your timeline enough, try that, work on smaller bits of animation at a time. If you rely too much on video reference, try free-styling. If you do too much realistic animation, try zany cartoons. If you have never drawn animation, try posing in 2D. So on. Reshuffle your bag of animation tricks and learn new ones.
5. Add Juice.
Add detail where it needs to be. Don't skip detail, don't make things faster cuz you don't know what to do between poses. Study references, get inspired. Favor slower timing and add detail.
6. Push for Accuracy.
Instead of pushing your animation to be more exaggerate, try to push it to be more accurate. Add natural detail, charm, and life to your animations, by being a more accurate translator. Reality and Animation are two languages, and our job is to be good translators. It's both Science and Dark Art. Sometimes accurate Science is more important. Sometimes Art. In both cases, understanding the Science helps the Art.
7. Stay real.
Look at live action reference. Study nature. Anything can work as inspiration or even reference for animation, but I think there is nothing more surprising, more insightful, and more charming.. than the real world.
Of course, we have to consider Style tho, so if you happen to be working on zany Cow & Chicken animations, then just ignore most of this and.. go zany!
^ ^