Acting it out, timing and spacing

Read an interesting article tonight.
http://www.11secondclub.com/helpful_hints/acting_it_out/
Addressed the importance of acting out your animations in front of a camera before starting to animate to get ideas on poses. which is something that I have tried in the past but havent really ever given enough time to. I think to much of the time we are so keen to get into the animation itself we dont spend enough time actually acting it out and coming up with interesting poses.

I also found the section on indicating very interesting. (Indicating is where when someone says they are hungry the do something like rub there tummy or when someone is talking about the sky they point to the sky) After reading this article I realised just how much indication is poorly used in animation. I myself can think of numerous times during uni where I couldn't think of what to do with a characters hands and would have them use blatant indication.

Besides that watched an interesting lecture on timing and spacing and think its going to be my main focus over the next week or 2 :)

Another interesting webinar on timing and spacing can be found here on animation mentor which is pretty awesome that I watched tonight http://www.animationmentor.com/webinar/replay/2010-timing-and-spacing-in-animation-explained.html