What approach to take for animating things?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I just learned about the NLE editor besides the plain old action editor… an d I do have a rigged character ready (shapekeys + armature)

Now, I know how to create an action strip and an action (ofcourse)… but I do not know how I should start when I want to create a real animation.
example:
suppose I have 2 actions created. Action 1 and action 2 share the same bone for a certain movement…
Then I create 2 action strips, one for each action.
Now, when I need to place these action right under each other, then I don’t get it how the common bone would behave…/be controlled.

Also, is there somewhere a good example of a short animation which makes use of the best practice stuff for animation?

Anything else to add as a hint or help for me (and probably other people starting with animation)?

2

you have to draw out a storyboard that says what your character does from frame 1 to 10, frame 11 to 20, and so on. Then you can assign actions to your character during those frames.

3

As I recall, the NLA resolves from the top strip down and each strip overrides the previous strip where the same bone is concerned. I’ve never really used it (for short animations there’s usually no point) so I’m not sure how you would achieve a complex result from mixing actions.

Shape keys, on the other hand, combine the result for verts affected by multiple keys.

4

Have a look at the WIKI. Especially here