Developing Skills

What animation techniques have you used to develop your skills?
To start with, we watched some stop frame animations as a group. We then split off into smaller groups, and experimented using ourselves as models, to create an experimental animation. We started to understand the speed at which models need to be moved to avoid the animation being too jumpy. We had all had quick goes on Macromedia Flash before, during ICT lessons, so when Natalie Hinchley, a professional animator, came in to teach us lip syncing, it didn't take too long for me to grasp working with the program. Lip syncing itself was very different though.
When Stuart Messinger came in to work with us, he set us the task of drawing a 12 image piece of a character pushing or pulling. It had to also loop, to create a sequence. This was towards the end of the course, and was my first experience of hand drawn animation. I made the mistake of not separating the legs of my character, so it began to look like a worm! It was not very effective at all, but it was my first attempt and I learnt from it.