Your animation is smooth, the effects are good but, you should really focus on the movements only, nuke out the effects for now and dont think about them, animate something you can do, you as a person as a human so you can have a reference for what you're doing.Stick is a skeleton for human body, everything you can do can you stick do as well, stand up and walk, duck a jump, take a camera and make yourself a video reference, then take a paper and pencil and watch the video reference, make notes, draw poses, exaggerate them, then turn on your PC and animate it.
This little "stand up" thing helps you to keep your timing real, you can get better just by watching people, you dont really have to animate, but you have to learn, you have to study the movement, thats how you get better in animation.I dont really see the point in sitting in front of your computer and thinking like "Im so bored, I will be good at animation just because I do random stuff" anymore, because I used to do this, for 4 years, or maybe more and the improvement was very slow, of course its good when you animate whenever you can, but its better to think about it more and spend less time by your computer and more time trying things out, watching people, watching references, watching movies, asking your mates to record you doing stuff etc.
Im telling you this because a LOT of animators here just animate, they dont prepare anything, they dont plan, they dont do storyboards, which is bad, why ? If you do a storyboard then you usually dont run in the dead end of the road (or whatever is the English expression) because you already know what will be there and if you plan correctly your time spent animating shrinks and your quality and quantity GROWS, which is good for you and your animation career.
To actually C&C your animation,
Im not a big fan of that first pose, it looks kinda weird, I cant see what hes going to do, the poses are important and when they arent clear, then the animation isnt clear, you want the animation to be clear.If the stick is preparing for the casting a magical spell he shouldnt look like hes holding his neck and hes struggling for air..
The next thing I notice is that his body resizes quite a lot, right after the first hop, the legs go way down and the crouch as well, the middle part is reaaaaaally long then it goes back again, that looks odd.
As for the second jump, hes out of balance, he hasnt built enough momentum to bend/lean back like this, his legs should go that forward, they could, if he was running before and he has a lot of energy/momentum.
When hes jumping his arms do something weird and they wobble, they are crossing and it doesnt feel right, I also think that it would be better to put this arms in front of him to help him be in balance, what do you do when you're on the very end of a cliff and someone pokes you in your back (you're looking down the cliff) you will pretty much put your arms back and you will struggle and wave as much as you can so you built some kind of weight over there that will bring you back to balance and you'll stay alive, dont you ? So I think it would be much better to have them in front of, since hes trying not to fail, right ? The next example of this, balancing, is when you watch the Long jump on Olympic games, or wherever you want.Sportsmen, in general, are great examples of everything, the movement is their living, they have to know how to move and they have to know stuff about balance and momentum, why are people running before they jump ? Because they're building the momentum, the energy.
I like the effects though, they seem pretty solid, keep up the good work, I know you can do better ;)
