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Description
A visual aid for whoever the hell I'm explaining keyframing to.

Beginners who don't know squat about animating are inclined to go for the "straight ahead" technique of animation. While some may find that they're more comfortable with this method, I personally find it a pain in the ass and wouldn't recommend it for beginners. Straight-ahead is when you draw a frame, go to the next frame and draw a new one and so on. The problem I have with this is that the sense of timing involves heavily on guessing how fast or slow the animation will be as you go along. It's literally winging it versus thoroughly planning ahead of time.

Keyframing (also known as pose-to-pose) on the other hand, involves drawing "key" poses in a sequence, very roughly animated. You then draw "inbetween" frames accordingly. If you need more frames, you draw inbetweens between THOSE inbetween. And so on. Less frames equals fast and more frames equal slow. This way you can plan out the sequence non-linearly and get a better sense of timing for your animation.

The only time I've used "straight-ahead" has been for special effects like electricity, muzzle flashes, bullets, explosions, etc.

Description
A visual aid for whoever the hell I'm explaining keyframing to.

Beginners who don't know squat about animating are inclined to go for the "straight ahead" technique of animation. While some may find that they're more comfortable with this method, I personally find it a pain in the ass and wouldn't recommend it for beginners. Straight-ahead is when you draw a frame, go to the next frame and draw a new one and so on. The problem I have with this is that the sense of timing involves heavily on guessing how fast or slow the animation will be as you go along. It's literally winging it versus thoroughly planning ahead of time.

Keyframing (also known as pose-to-pose) on the other hand, involves drawing "key" poses in a sequence, very roughly animated. You then draw "inbetween" frames accordingly. If you need more frames, you draw inbetweens between THOSE inbetween. And so on. Less frames equals fast and more frames equal slow. This way you can plan out the sequence non-linearly and get a better sense of timing for your animation.

The only time I've used "straight-ahead" has been for special effects like electricity, muzzle flashes, bullets, explosions, etc.