Sprite attempts for indie game of sorts.

[TheShyGuy]

Good understanding of fundamentals are what build a diversely skilled [insert any action], simply because fundamentals are the building blocks of greatness.

To rephrase: With anything, you need to understand the basics in order to make awesome stuffs.

With animation, it's more of understanding basic physics, character, suggestion (for example, you don't have to draw every possible in between frame. The viewer will fill them in automatically), staging and exaggeration, etc. The physics part takes care of the "arcs", "secondary motion", "slow in-slow out", etc. After that, you have to understand who your character is and make choices about staging and whether or not to exaggerate things.