Whenever you do anything at all, using reference is always a good idea. Whether you’re doing art, sport or math, using something that already exists can help you understand the subject. Same thing goes for animators, most of the time they don’t animate from the top of their head. They use reference, or they get up and act it out, or even film themselves. Similarly to a painter who does a sketch of the subject before painting it, to comprehend the shapes. As a boxer who watches footage of his opponent to understand his movements, to get the timing of his hits right. Same for animation, reference is important to get your timing right to make a nice natural art piece, because nobody wants to see a bad fight, a bad painting, or a bad animation.
First hand scene
I remember my family asked me to show them my school projects one day in the summer. I’ve shown my mom my projects before, but my sister has never seen any or almost none of my works. The animation I showed them was a ballet animation I did at the end of my third semester. It turned out very nicely, it was a total of around four to five seconds. When it ended, my sister asked: “Is that it?”. She’s not a person who watches animations or plays video games. So I understand that she doesn’t understand the amount of work put into a short animation like that. It really opened my eyes to how some people don’t really understand or value animation for what it is. My mom, luckily, told her that an animation like that takes a lot of work and time, so I’m glad that she could understand, but I believe it was because I’ve shown her my works before. If that was the first time she saw my animation too, I strongly believe she would have had the same reaction as my sister. As long as she at least understood that an animation takes time, I’m happy.
Daniel's Non Fiction blog 