Few things

First thing is Horton is out today. Go see it! As soon as I get my shots I will cut a new reel :D

The second thing is something that I feel is important in animation. Lead and follow. When animating a character in the pose to pose method it is sometimes hard to break up the different body parts. The common result is animation that looks like every pose is hitting at the same time. The solution is not to just offset keys a few frames. It might work sometimes but you have to know why you are doing it. The thing that I find helpful is the idea of lead and follow. To me, lead and follow is the idea that a body part will lead an action and then something else will follow it. For example: A character raising his hand. The arm will begin the action (shoulder lifts, upper arm, etc) and then the body. This is just an example and can be animated many different ways including having the body start the action. So for this example, the arm leads the body up. The way that I think of it sometimes is that the arm is an important part of the scene and I want the viewer to look at it right away. Thus, I will lead with the arm. It's not a science and I usually go for what looks the most appealing at the end. The reason this is helpful to me is because when I block out an action, I already know if a body part is going to lead a gesture or move. Knowing this will allow me to isolate movements in my blocking so that I don't go to spline and have poses hitting at the same time. Personally, I don't always have every single part of a character moving on the same pose. Sometimes only an arm or hand will move in stepped mode. This assures me that I won't have the problem with twinning or robotic poses. Hope this helps! Werd.