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Hey @buitefr1 Victor mentioned me to see if I could help you, so here I go! I saw your animations, they are okay, but if you want to make them look good you'll have to observe how the human body moves and works. That was one key that unlocked better animation for me. I don't use references, but they are really good for making good animations too, because not only you're copying the poses your reference body makes, you get to memorize how certain poses are. As for me, I always used to struggle on how a Sim would look when crouched down, but I used myself as a reference and over time I memorized the pose. Another good thing to keep in mind is gravity and physics, remember that when you're waving your hand, your body follows along with the wave but in a small way, or just moves around because of the vibration of your hand moving quickly.
Now, while I was looking at the toddler animation, I saw how the movement of the head was. Again, you did okay but you must remember how things start moving and how they stop, this is called the Slow in and slow out animation principle. Imagine a car, it doesn't start out going really fast, it starts out slow, then speeding, and then when it plans to stop, it stops but slowly. While you did good when the toddler first starts moving her head, while she was shaking her head she was doing it in a constant speed. You should use the Slow in and slow out animation principle for this too, when the head goes to one side, give it a chance to stop, so that it can start going to the other side again.
Okay, well I wasn't here to criticize your animations in any way, I just wanted to give you tips on how you can get them to look smooth and realistic. But don't worry, we all start out doing something "badly" but as we gain skill and learn about what we're doing we'll get better over time. I first started animating back when I was 6 years old, on the Nintendo DSI. I only made pictures as a story, but as I gained more skill I actually started animating with keyframes and so on. But of course since I was still very young then, I stopped, but started again when I was 12, this time with 3D animation. And even now, a couple years later, I'm still learning so I can tell you that animation is a good talent that takes time to master. I'll give you a link to this amazing video that tells you all about the 12 principles of animation, which are very helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjIdI4bF4
Right, so that's all for now, good luck!
- When one gets inspired by the other, the one inspires another - Anything is Possible.
You can view some of my WIPs and other stuff for TS3 on my Twitter here --->
https://twitter.com/SweetSavanita