I took a couple of weeks off last Christmas/New Year's and decided to work on a few new animations.
I had been looking at a bunch of videos for references and couldn't pick one to do, so I decided to mash a couple together. Despite the complexity of the movements, this animation proved to be incredibly straightforward and fun to do. Contrary to my usual nature of animating pose-to-pose, I placed a handful of golden key poses before completely switching over to a straight ahead style. The only downside to this was that it took a little longer to animate than my usual time.
It's all about the bouncing ball. Before anything else, I always make sure the trajectory on the hip. The rest just fell into place. (although it also helps that I took a few hours to study and understand my references before modifying them)
That depends on many factors. For this type of animation, for example, it shouldn't take me longer than 2 and a half work days (at most, and even then that's a pretty generous estimate). This time around I took about 4-5 days. I was on vacation so naturally I was lazing about more than working seriously on this. I really wanted to enjoy it, you know?