Walk Cycle Part 2

Was there a part one? Probably not. Oh well.
So it's the second week of our walk cycle assignment. In order to try and push myself further I'm attempting a second walk cycle instead of just tweaking my old one (which I plan to do as well) and use them both for the final assingment. I was thinking of trying to go a four-legged walk cycle as well, but after some research (and realizing both these cycles have taken me entire weekends to complete) I realized that idea was not just stupid but also complete insanity. I'm still thinking of including a third character but their walk will probably be more cartoony-bouncy with not so many joints and limbs that need to be moved around. Maybe something more along the lines of short little nubs instead of thighs and knees and calves and feet.
Anyway; the process. Somehow I feel like there is an easier way to animate a walk cycle than what I'm doing and just no one wants to share it. Drawing frame by frame seems a little messy to me, especially when you want to keep your character's clothes (and limbs) a consistent size. But then you try using the same shapes over and over and suddenly your character looks completely static and lifeless, so. That's something to riddle out I guess.
On the plus side I've been finding the 'turn your layer into neon colored outlines' button very useful for clothing, though, so that's good. I seem to remember using that back in the day. And it seems that when you have locked layers, onion skin won't show them, which is nice if I'm just trying to match up the clothing movement. I'm still not too great at it, but I think this walk cycle went a lot faster than my first, so I guess that's improvement.
On the negative side I'm still being really fussy about how I want my characters to look and it bothers me that they can't look exactly how I want them. But I'm going to take an educated guess and assume that's how most people feel about pretty much everything they make. Also I'm starting to look at professional animations and feel exhausted. Those poor people.
At the end of this project I want to feel like I've actually accomplished something instead of feeling like I've just 'gotten through' a project. As long as I stop getting sick every week I think I can pull it off maybe?

Excersizes something and whatever

I think probably one and two but it might be two and three I guess I don't know how to count.
Also I forgot to write in this last week, so that's my bad too.
This past week we were supposed to create three dynamic images with three different types of color, but knowing dynamic poses aren't my strong suite I chose to start animating instead, making a very short 4 frame jump. Sketching the poses didn't take long, drawing the figure took the most amount of time. Had I been choosing only one color method I don't think coloring would have taken too long - though I can see where after a good number of frames coloring with the brush (which is what I used for the flat and shaded figures) would get horribly annoying. Just to do something different I tried using the bitmap fill - I don't think I would use it again unless it did something really special for the image.
Now I'm working on making a walk cycle, which is where the frustration comes in. I want to make it look natural, not too cartoonish, while still keeping the character unique. I'm okay getting the keyframes, but the frames between seem to me like they aren't smooth enough.
And as I'm working on this at home complaining about how much better I was at animating years ago (I almost went to college for animation...maybe I should have instead of fashion design, would have saved me the headache of changing majors), my friend says 'shouldn't it just be like riding a bike?' And I thought, yeah, shouldn't it be? Shouldn't this all be coming back to me soon? Then I realize sure - it is like riding a bike - only now the bike has a pedal for each individual toe. And it shoots  lazes. Hopefully I can figure out how to use flash to it's fullest potential, and when I can figure all that out, I won't be so stressed about animating and things will come back easier.
Either way, I really want to improve my animation skills, so I'm going to try and create a full colored character for this assignment. May or may not get that far, we'll see.