Steel's Stick Animation Guide

I'm gonna criticize this tutorial but before I move on, I'm not saying that this tutorial doesn't help you to improve or it will give you some negative side effect. I think it is helpful to beginners. It's just you need to realised this tutorial is over a decade old! It's very outdated. But if you choose to follow the tutorial, go ahead. I just wanna criticize the tutorial, you know, do my own thing. So...

"FBF - Frame by Frame"
Wow, brings back a lot of memories.
This is what they would call it, but the real term is "straight ahead". Look the fourth principle of animation.

"Fun Fact: Most pro. movies run at ~30 fps"
Actually... www.quora.com/Whats-better-24f…
In other words, in North America it's 25fps but in most countries it's 24fps or maybe for films it's 24 fps but for cinema it's 25 fps. I assume those 30 fps, 45 fps, 60 fps are for films and not for animated films. I encourage you to stick with 24 fps only.

"The basic animation part:"
You're suppose to follow the first principle of animation, which is squashing and stretching. Because of the lack of it, even if you put trails it still looks like a hard rock that falls to the ground yet somehow it can bounce. A bouncing ball can't bounce if it's not squishy enough. The speed looks off too. It went from too slow to extremely fast and then all the sudden the gravity gives up its power and we're on the moon now.

If you wanna animate a bouncing ball, draw a line to show its path. Then mark the spacing, then animate it. Of course you gotta apply some squashing and stretching to show that it can bounce. If anyone wants a tutorial for this, I hope I have the time to make one. (Because I'm currently making a simple animation for practicing)

"Basic Stick Movement:"
This is something I wanna add. It's better if you take references from real people doing real walk. You can search on Youtube for references but here's some top search result:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3_em6…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Veye…
And here's 100 different kinds of walking, just for some fun activity: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEoUhl…
It's unfortunate that he didn't tell people that using references is not cheating. It's helps us to understand how real things move. Keep using references until you've done some many times that you don't need a reference anymore.
Also, you should animate it with pose to pose but you can do it with straight ahead. Just be careful with the change of size.

"Loops vs Redrawn:"
Just use loops. Even professionals embrace laziness in order to reach their deadlines. Btw, don't use "Movie Clips". Convert it to "Graphic" instead.

I watched his other (old) examples; run, punch, kick, leap. The problem with these is that he added some personalities to each of these except the last one. His run looks like he's having fun running through a field. His punch looks comedic. His kick ends with a little tappidy-tap, like he's dancing. I got nothing wrong with his leap. His leap has no personality, which is fine for a reference animation kinda.

If you wanna make examples, remove any personality. This is why we need references. We don't run, punch or kick like that. (I mean, look how I kick. It looks nothing like how a professional kicks lol)

Animation Concepts:
...only explains two of the principles I think, which is slow in and slow out, and anticipation. But I give some credit for explain slow in and slow out decently.

Stick movements (advanced):
He should've provide references from real people doing it but using his own animation is fine I guess, eventhough he didn't provide the slower version. If you guys want to see real people doing some moves, I suggest searching "tekken moves in real life" on Youtube.

Conclusion: I think it's important to understand the principles of animation FIRST. It's just too bad that back in those days, no one knows the principles and how important they are. (They are so important, animators sees it as the "bible" for animators) We didn't have Alan Becker's 12 principles series back then but now we do. So why don't we just watch it and try to understand it. Alan has made tons of animations in those videos, so why don't we try to recreate them so we can understand better?

Also, I have to tell you that almost no one knows how to do "pose to pose" animations back then. So everyone just do frame by frame. Pose to pose is important to animate stick figures especially during a fight. We can see a fight as dancing, some guys moving from pose to pose.

So again, I'm not saying this tutorial sucks. It certainly helpful. It's just lack of something. Something important but unfortunately not available at that time.