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.