1st Attempt at Animating

Well, this was the first animation that I've done in a year. I used the model of the turret, and decided to juxtapose the militaristic harshness of the model with some much friendlier actions. The actions that I animate the turret through don't follow any particular plot line; I just thought they looked cute. I'm not incredibly satisfied with the way the jumps or swivels, but I didn't want to let my perfectionistic tendencies get in the way of me finishing the project in a timely manner. This little project was a good way to reacclimate me with animation, and helped refresh my memory about animating and polishing the motion of objects. I used the Dope Sheet for the first time to help adjust the timing of my animation, and I found it really useful when I needed to move keyframes around. Speaking of frames; I could've sworn that this animation was over five seconds but Windows Media Player says it's only four seconds. Apparently I can't do basic math when it comes to calculating how many seconds my animation would take. If I could go back and continue working on this for a tiny bit more, I would definitely extend the action so that it fills up more time. I would also go back and try to make the jump at the beginning seem more natural. Making objects look like they're jumping seems to be something I have trouble with.