Anyone know how to solve the infamous “animations looking too mechanical/robotic/stiff”? All I’m trying to do is make my character walk, I thought it’d be sufficient to have the legs and arms rotate back and forth, but it looks bad…
Hi Yoshimaster96
I would suggest going to YouTube and closely watching a walk cycle, or stand in the middle of the mall and watch the people around you. There’s usually more moving than the arms and legs; The hips float from side to side with each step, putting weight on the foot currently in contact with the ground. The upper body (chest) moves on the Z axis with the arms. The torso moves up and down with each step. If your model has a tail, then it has to move with the legs on the Z axis (and the longer the tail, the more ‘wave-y’ [like a snake] it has to be).
Typically, the more you have moving, the better it looks.
Hope this helps,
AerialBot
i call this the approximation technique. start out with a rough key frame. don’t worry about it looking bad as long as you get the basic idea of the movement down. after that, fine tune it until it becomes better. just play with it until you have it the way you want it.
A good way is to make a reference video, and then follow this. There are some good reference videos of walk cycles. The problem is that when the human body (or any other body for that matter) moves, everything moves. This is hard to animate because it means that during a walk cycle, almost EVERY bone is moving in its own way.
The question is, what do you want it to look like? 
I wouldn’t call it “terrible”. Given the nature of the character I assume you’re looking for something stylistic, or cartoony, rather than realism. I’m not a professional by any means. Still. I’ve recognised that the same mechanics apply to humanoid motion regardless of the subject matter.
Here’s a little tutorial aimed at a more exaggerated style of animation. It actually helped me Identify some of the key points for a simple walk cycle. They can be applied to a cartoon character or something more human/realistic.
Get the hips and torso more involved. Smooth out motion using the graph editor. Especially if you’re going to loop the animation sequences. Snapping and pauses in timing are something I still have problems with myself. It can add an unwanted clunkiness to the animation.
In fact using the graph editor will not only help out with smoothing the motion, it lends itself towards a cleaner set of keyframes. You can often do a better job with 3 or so keys, than a multitude of them. you only really need to start doing micro management with keys for specific events. Other than that, keep things as clean and neat as you can.