Shifting Sights & Sounds - An Animation Study

I love stories and the process of story telling! My most favorite medium of storytelling is animation mostly because, you incorporate all the other forms of art to simulate an imaginarium so intricate and controlled by the artists' eye view, while at the same time sparking genesis of a room for more imagination in that world the artist has just ideated ! It is, thus, chiefly for this reason I respect animated movies more than the best live-action production there is to see, not only out of respect for the work put in, but the very beauty of that hard-work and the subsequent opus! 

Above is my first attempt at animation, and below my second. Being a self taught artist, I thought it'd be easy to be a self taught animator, turns out it is nowhere close to trivial, but is tough and frustrating!

First Attempt: The Evolution Sequence...

This was part of a larger video (which I edited out because if it's insignificance) and this sequence was the first scene in that video. I always wanted to draw dinosaurs ( I'm doodling one right now!) -- So I came up with this sequence and drew everything frame by frame, some on paper and scaned them and the rest on photoshop including manipulation of the drawn-then-scanned ones. This was done in a span of 3 hours from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. The finishing touches were given on aftereffects that evening and my first ever animated production was completed. 

Second Attempt:The-music-inspired-"Awww"-extractor-gag-with-a-puppy

I hoped this would've been a lot, lot better, the movements more organic and gracefully synced with the background score. But all comes with practice!

Well, this one was conceived with me composing the melody while playing the guitar. I recorded it straight away on an app on my tablet. added extra instruments and mixed it to fine finish! You can listen to it here

It sounded somewhat peaceful and cute-sy and thus this gag was thought of. 
After a couple of months I finally found a free weekend and after some tinkering, trying to figure out After Effects, I managed to peace it this! 

This is a study and I hope to refine my skills over time! :D