Spriting question

[mouthuvmine]

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.

[Wonkyth]

I haven't been animating for long, but I've always animated before shading, or indeed texturing of any kind.

[Hueij]

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.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

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.

[Scarab]

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.