Not sure how helpful or accurate of a technique this is, but when I draw the figure, the line of action I often see is the line of the spine, or sometimes the the wingspan of the figure, across the shoulders and down the arms. It can change based on the pose but generally that is where I find myself looking.
When I draw faces and expressions, I usually draw the sphere of the skull, then sometimes the cross axis of the face (eyeline and vertical line down through the center of the nose) to establish the tilt and angle, then I find a line of action across the brows and sometimes also the mouth. If you have the brows, you know a lot of what you need to draw the eyes, and if you have the mouth, you know most of what you need to know about how the nose and cheeks are contorted. That way if you want to come back and get into more detail later you have the foundation of the expression laid out, even without the reference image. Additionally, if the expression has the mouth wide open, I find it helpful to rough in the jawline when I draw the cross axis of the face.
I hope that's useful!
As someone that paid to go to a top-tier school for animation, I recommend learning as much as you can beforehand, trying to get some job experience beforehand, and then re-evaluating whether you really need school to advance yourself. A degree does not get you a job as much as your portfolio and reel will. Additionally, having tuition debt and working in an industry that you may not get paid very well to start is very stressful.
All that being said, for 3D it can be really helpful to be at a good school if you need access to expensive software, and learning how to use it quickly is hard without a little help from an actual teacher. In picking schools, make sure you go to one where the teachers have significant and somewhat recent industry experience.
For 2D, I had a teacher that had worked at Disney for over 15 years and all he really did was teach us this book: The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. If you master all the concepts in that book, you will be an outstanding 2D animator.
Gesture drawing is important and you should keep going with it, not just because it will help you learn form and movement, but it will actually make you faster at drawing. And you need to be fast because you will be drawing a lot! It will also help you do a first pass at what you're animating quickly and get your ideas about the motion into it before getting into the nitty-gritty of adding detail or secondary animation like fabric or hair moving. Also having those expressive poses in your head gives you a library of reference when you are trying to make your characters act/show emotion/tell a story.
Everything you learn with 2D animation will make you a better 3D animator. I learned 2D first and it made 3D easier for me because I could focus on learning how to use the software and not worry about learning arcs and eases and basic aspects of motion at the same time.
I wish you the best of luck! Just keep practicing! :)
Lo siento con anticipación porque el español no es mi primer idioma.
Yo lucho con el diseño de personajes yo mismo. Realmente puede ayudar mirar las hojas de diseño de personajes para un artista que te gusta y observar las posturas que usa el artista para expresar ciertos tipos de personajes: villanos, bonitos comics, confiados y extrovertidos versus tímidos, y así sucesivamente.
También puede ayudar a ver a los actores interpretar personajes en una escena, hacer una pausa y hacer un gesto cada vez que se establecen en una nueva postura o pose. Las películas animadas y las viejas películas mudas son un buen lugar para mirar porque tienen una actuación y postulación más exageradas.
¡Espero que algo de esto sea útil y tenga sentido!
