When animating, does anyone find it easier to animate before shading? I don't go too crazy on the shading, but I usually have 3 shades of each basic color. I've been shading each frame as I go for, literally, years, and now I'm wondering if that's what a) causes me to get burnt out and take months off at a time, and b) makes some of my animations too stiff. I feel like if I weren't so worried about all the little non-moving details it might help me focus of getting from one frame to the next faster, while it's fresh on my mind.
I only ask because I'm so far into the project I'm working on, and I'd hate to stop and try a new way to find out it sucks.
I haven't been animating for long, but I've always animated before shading, or indeed texturing of any kind.
What works for me is starting animation with only roughly outlined sprites (even before colouring them) and only I'm satisfied with that I start to refine them. If you do a Google search on "pencil tests" you'll find a lot of animated sketches from great movies that were cleaned up only after the pencil tests worked out.
If the sprites are small enough I draw and shade them per frame. If they are large then I do basic shapes with solid colors and go back and clean them up once the animation looks right.
I will usually shade my initial standing sprite, and then reduce it to flat colours for animating, then shade each frame when the animation is complete.