Animation references

Do you guys know any good sites for (human) animation?
Like refernces for the most important poses, movements and so on?
I find it very hard to do animations without references, but I haven't found good sites for it yet..

no but a good idea is if you have a camera or camcorder is to record yourself or various other people in action & study them.

iClone is pretty good program for animation as you can use xbox360 kinect thing to record your own movements in a similar fashion to what the mocap studios do without having to look like a right muggins in the daft looking spandex & bauble suits.

I'm not much of an artist but maybe some of the others on here will be able to provide you with some links to reference sites. The only one I can think of is deviantart , which has loads of stock & reference photos for all sorts of things.

maybe try here:
http://truebones.com/
I haven't looked to see if he has what you need, I seem to remember he developed a movement tracking system

There's software that uses bones for 2D but usually its not free, you can even use Sketchup but its very time consuming
I did a little tutorial here:
http://www.nigecdesigns.co.uk/tiki-index.php?page=Animation
I never really thought about using it for a 2d character but it would be possible... I'll have a go!

a couple of 2d bone animation programs are Spriter, Spine & anime studio pro but they are mostly suited for side scrolling 2d games as I don't believe you can create realistic/good front/back animations.

there is also another program which is free called "basis" but I don't know if it is still in active development as their kickstarter campaign failed miserably earlier this year. having said that it seemed to have some unique features not featured in the other 3 2d skeleton programs I mentioned above.

http://achild.wikidot.com/basis - basis
http://esotericsoftware.com/ - spine
http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm - spriter
http://anime.smithmicro.com/ - anime studio pro

@Nige: yeah the thing you linked seems to have a plugin which supports the use of Kinect.

I started ignoring what Truebones was up to, years ago he was "the man" but like a lot of developers he struggled and as a result bombarded anyone who subscribed to his mailing list with offers and it p'ed me off,the worst thing is unsubscribe didn't work, I don't get much now.
I'm a "if I want something I look for it" type of guy, I loath cold selling!

yeah not a fan of over abusive subscription email amounts myself either considering majority of them are never anything you are particularly interested in.

The programs are very interesting, I'll definetly have a look at them, thanks
But I was actually rather looking for references of movements for animation than for animation programs^^

This may be useful

Eadweard Muybridge

http://www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk/

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The programs are very interesting, I'll definetly have a look at them, thanks
But I was actually rather looking for references of movements for animation than for animation programs^^

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yes we know but neither of us are much for drawing or animating (I guess) which is why we shared some potential programs that you might find useful. google is your friend (probably, maybe) but the thing with pre-made references is that they might not be what you had in mind based on the art style/theme of your game, which was why I suggested using a camera/camcorder to catch yourself &/or other people in action.

cludcatcher, that link is very useful
Also found www.posemaniacs.com
Thanks to all your responses