Hello All
I have added an armature and animated with keyframes as in the screen shot. How do I add a second animation?
Thank you very much for your help,
Richard Hughes
There are a couple of options. Pretty obviously you can move later on in the timeline and add another animation sequence (set of keyframes) there. This is useful in some situations. But the more common way is to go into the Action Editor (from the Dope Sheet drop-down list), rename/re-label the Action if you want, make sure it has a Fake User (The F button is enabled - dark), then Unlink it from the model using the X button. There is then no Action associated with the model, even though the keyframes still exist. Delete all the keyframes, reset your transforms to their base state (doing this differs a bit for Objects or Armatures), then start setting the keyframes for a new Action. Each new Action can record a new animation sequence. Previously created Actions can be accessed using the drop-down list. The individual Actions can the be turned into NLA strips for assembly and editing in the NLA Editor.
TIP: using the Fake User button insures that the Actions are not deleted when Blender is closed – datablocks (such as an Action) without any users are automatically deleted.
Good God! Not as trivial as I thought at the beginning… (I have had the same question about adding new animations and wanted to ask it here in the forum before I found this thread). So only these 2 options, right? First is just to stick to one animation and second is that monstrously hackish umpa-lumpa with fake user? 
I think you need to switch to the NLA screen and click the RED snowflake icon.
This will convert your existing animation into an NLA strip.
Then you get another channel and you can record another animation.
Until you click that RED Snowflake icon you are stuck with all animation on one channel.
This is how you can separate thing like leg movement from torso or arm swing, etc…
Make a different NLA strip for each part of the body. You can loop the strips and re-time them.
That’s interesting. I’ll give that a go and let you know how I get on.
Thanks,
Richard
Why is this “monstrously hackish”? It’s just unlinking a datablock and starting a new one, making sure that the old one is not deleted. Three mouse clicks, takes less than 5 seconds. Describing it takes a heckuva lot more time than doing it.
The “Fake user” option is very efficient, and with Actions is set by default, so usually you don’t have to manually set it, but it’s good to check so you don’t lose data. Since an Action is a datablock, and datablocks without users are considered superfluous (a good idea or files can bloat very, very fast), userless datablocks get deleted when a file is closes and reopened. Fake User gives you the option to prevent that without having to link the datablock to an actual Object. It’s just a flag saying “Don’t delete me.”
Actions can be converted to NLA strips at any time, so if you’re working on a series of related animations, you have the option of doing a “library” of Actions and then converting them to NLA for further editing and combinations. It doesn’t have to be done just to create a new set of keyframes (i.e., a new Action).
That’s it! This step I was looking for. And then at any time I can edit my actions by just selecting them in NLA window and pressing TAB. Exactly what I needed, thank you, Atom!