Antifarea:
As far as help being offered, I personally have learned a lot in overall by just reading other threads, which is something I been wanting to point out in terms of feedback... helping someone with edits and or feedback not only helps the person who's asking, but helps others as well who might have been wanting to know the same thing.
I'm glad this is so, sometimes I do extensive edits for newcomers with 2 posts that never get back to me and/or update their work (I don't mind if they do and don't integrate my points, I mind when they never show up again) and it's kinda discouraging, it helps to think that other people might be benefiting from it. And of course, on the personal level, *I* am benefitting from it. I've grown tremendously, not as an artist but as a craftsman in Pixelation just by practicing the end level of pulling together a piece. The first few levels of how it's done could use a lot of work but boy, have I learned to do the last 5% heh
I think that this can help a lot, also what would help a lot would be to make a thread where people vote or request tutorials to be made...
Personally I think this won't work, because a tutorial is something that requires extensive work and often I've found that one has to start from the bottom up and explain everything (like I tried in my attempt in Ramblethread) so it's more like... life undertaking than 'oh someone asked how to do a fighter animation, let me whip up some examples right quick".
happymonster:
If it's in my comfort zone, I don't use any reference. If it's outside, I tend to go to google image and just look at a hell of a lot of stuff and try to absorb as much as I can, but unless explicitly stated, I don't trace or 1:1 copy what I'm seeing. I come from a comic art background where what is prized - in my opinion - more than fidelity, realism and plausibility in rendering, is that the artist conveys his uniqueness in every part of what he draws. So whereas I might look for example, at pictures of cars when I want to draw a car, I will not draw a specific model or brand car, I will draw a Helm car, and I think aesthetically that's more of a priority than just doing the job of the
illustrator with realism and plausibility, if you get what I mean.
What I found I gain from perusing reference before I start drawing is that it just sparks up the imagination even further because it reminds you of all the little things that a real thing has about it that you'd forget if you started with 100% imagination. If I say 'draw a kettle' to my brain, it might forget the bottom rim, or to add a curvature to the nose, or to add a split tip to it or whatever thousands of years of kettle engineering have found to be useful to have on there. Once I remember that stuff, I can then reinterpret them in a Helmy way.
Vercingetorix the Galois:
Your question is an animation question, right? I'm not an expert, which can be illustrated perfectly by how I do not use stick figures at all, I work with vague silhouettes when I start to make an animation and once I'm happy with the key frames, I will pixel them fully and then use parts of them rotated and then cleaned up and redrawn to make in betweens. I am a low level animator, I don't know many tricks besides easing a frame in and out, basic anticipation and if there's anything I'm trying to learn is that sometimes less frames/fluidity is better. Animation gurus will answer your question more fully, I hope.