Five Frames.

Along with first pass/final pass one of the earliest rules I learned as an animator was very simple and very important: Keep your poses 5 frames apart. Our art director at the time was more like a lead animator and he stressed this idea upon me any time I handed off an animation. I have worked this way for ten years and rarely adjust timing because of it.

Whether at 30 frames per second or 60 this workflow will ensure that your files are clean and well organized and, over time, surprisingly precise. The basic idea is to think, "Where does this character need to be in 5 frames?"

Once you start to think in 5 frame snippets you will begin to see a marked improvement in your posing as well as your timing. The amount of frames between keys will show you exactly enough information for adjustments. If you stop playback somewhere between your keys and the pose doesn't look good you either need an in-between, more frames, or need to rethink the bookend poses.

The 5 frame rule also helps me animate from start to finish without having to revisit sections or go back in to the middle of a file. I'm constantly thinking about where the next pose needs to be and simply shaping it out of the pose that came before. In this way I'm very minimalist with my keys(though most animators should not be). If something moves, it gets keyed. If it doesn't change, I might not key it at all (Very true of feet) and can instead stay focused on the moving parts. If I need to go back and move something static later I know that it's safe to key it on a multiple of 5 because everything else is. When an animation is finished only then do I bother making nice clean rows of keys for every control but, for the most part, all the controls already are in nice, clean rows every 5th frame.

Animating from start to finish also means that my poses flow kinematically into one another. There is only so much change that can happen in 5 frames and pulling the next pose from the one before it leads to better, smoother arcs. Some people may argue that animating this way eliminates secondary motion but that's entirely untrue. Smart posing includes secondary motion. You are constantly working in moving arcs that pass through points (key poses) at varying speeds that you can control. When you define the speed of the "in" and the "out" you don't need to add extra keys. Adjusting your curves later on can only improve how much or how little secondary motion occurs.

Of course there are moments that need to snap on a frame or animations that require different timing or in-betweens but, generally speaking, posing across 5 frames is a great organizational time saver. Every project I have worked on always has that one animator who keys on ticks or percentages of a frame. I hate that guy. 5 frame animating eliminates that guy. It ensures your files will be clean and easy to adjust. It will also make you faster not having to worry about where your keys are. Another benefit of this method is that it becomes clear to others how your file is organized. Other animators won't have to figure out why there is a sea of keys on every frame because you moved a toe or adjusted a foot in an off key. As a final bonus designers will be able to see your poses better and break down where to add their magic, too. Cleaner animation leads to better work all the way down the pipe.

Strangely enough this concept somewhat mirrors Japanese animation, which is often animated on 4s. To save time and money less frames are used for animation which forces animators to work in smarter, cleaner poses. Less space to communicate ideas results in a need for clearer language of motion. Denying yourself the ability to do in-betweens will force you to be clearer in your language, too.

If you still doubt this workflow, take a messy file with a lot of keys and grab all the controls. Key them all every 5 frames and delete anything in between. You'll be surprised how little the animation changes.