Blocking down key poses

I tried this new way today. Well its not really new, but I never really used it.

Before I did straight ahead animation. Which was more comfy for me to do. But I decided to do the other way with key poses with this new animation.

And I gotta say, man it is awesome!!! Because my biggest struggle is the story part. So just quickly blocking out the poses and what happens give me a good visual on how it is going to work. And since I am a visual person it helps a ton.

So I can tweak the story real easily if needed without moving a lot of curves.

Also it is super helpful because it'll make sure what your story points are, and make those poses really strong.

Before I was worried about the mechanics and such, but since now I'm worried more about the story, and the personality of the character, i think this will help out a lot!

New Idea's/Why I animate

Anyways I was animating something and thought it was a simple idea. Its about a guy bouncing a ball and is optimistic, but it hits in the face and blah blah blah. It's kinda complicating for me, I need to simplify it.

At first I realized my character wasn't being himself the whole time. The walk cycle was dull, everything didn't show personality.

So I ended up deleting everything and re did everything

Also I am learning and realizing why I make animations. There needs to be a reason a person looks at it. Whey would they waste there precious time to look at my animation? I need to make it worthwile for them. I need it to have a point. A good laugh, a touching story etc. And to do this I need to make my animation clear, and entertaining from beginning to end.

I need to ask myself these questions so I can make my animation better, ask why would someone like this? Why would someone not?

And for me.. I like funny things. I like to make people laugh, I like being simple, a happy guy. And thats what I want to show through my animations. But how do I show that?

I guess I can show it through how he reacts to thing. What he thinks of an object, how he reacts to different people. But how make it worth watching? By making it funny. How making it funny?

Not sure. I don't want to do something completely random. But I like humor through people's personalities.

Like my friend Hiro. He doesnt' do random stuff. But his timing, and reactions to certain situations are just soo hilarious.

But how would the audience know it should be funny? How would they know what his personality is like with just a few frames?

Key poses. Those should tell what type of character he is. Even just in a few frames. The audience needs to know just by how he walks, how he looks etc.