Breakdowns are kind of tricky to explain… They give your animation a bit more shape and add to the timing.  With breakdowns, you can add in overlapping action and ease ins and outs.  Example!



The top two images are my two keys.  The bottom is a breakdown.  In the breakdown screenshot, I have the light table turned on.  The grey is the previous key and the pink is the next key.  Notice how the head is halfway between the two and the shoulders are pretty much in the same place.  Now when I go to add inbetweens, the head will move faster than the body at first, and then the body will move faster to catch up.  This particular bit ended up looking like this:



Adding breakdowns is pretty much just adding in little extra bits of information for your animation and for yourself.  They’re there to tell you how you want that motion in between the two keys to look, and how fast bits should be moving and stuff.  This probably isn’t the best way to explain breakdowns though, and for that I’m sorry.  This part is one of those things where I just feel where drawings and frames should go and it’s hard for me to put into words.

So here it is now with breakdowns and keys:

At this step you can also add keys, which… are probably more important than breakdowns, but… This is mostly a pose to pose animation so there aren’t too many keys.  For example, between “I am” and “NOT”, I added a little squash of anticipation before stretching into the breakdown.  If he just went straight from pose to pose, it would look boring and not right.  You should always have an anticipation pose before a big movement.  It prepares the viewer by letting them know where the character is planning on moving.

Breakdowns are also where you can start to show drag in the head.  I’m a lot rougher with my breakdowns too, as you might be able to tell.  They’re more of a guide than my main poses and just there for me to see the motion rather than the acting. :D