This was a slow but steady tutorial, in which I solidified my ability to work with Auto Key. Although my tutor Sanjay recommended starting off without it due to excessive keyframing and creating a messy graph editor, my tutor Dan agrees it can help save time for more experienced users.
This task is where I felt I gained enough confidence to use Auto Key consistently.
I felt I succeeded at creating a smooth and pretty standard walk cycle, with a slight bop to his walk, via following the YouTube tutorial given by our tutor. 

This was a more fun task, as I wanted to create more of an animation cycle for a game character who has to jump over these platforms while preparing to fight an enemy.
I wanted my character to have an exaggerated flex in his jumps.
I felt it would have to be an animation for a fighting game alongside a parkour game. With parkour alone, there aren't very big challenges of a jump, so having an opponent would potentially make this adequately challenging.
To improve this animation, I would, of course, animate an opponent, but within what I have already animated, I would spend some more time articulating the head movements. to me this is the part of the body that should be the least flimsy- although comedic. to adress this i would spend more time in the graph editor creating less of a gaps between the overlap areas and reduce the amount of steep curves in my graph; which usually result in more drastic and sudden movements.

I went back and updated my Fred animation to include the reference video alongside it, and improve on with some suggestions by my tutor.

I liked this task as it was more about creating that visual twist movement in the hips and shoulders.
The impact and slight overlap of the body as it lands made me feel I had executed the scene meticulously, with grace and control, totally fitting the theme of a secret agent trying to sneak past the intruder tripwire alarm.
This task challenged with with my rotational skills within Maya as almost every limb had to twist and follow through with the movement.

To improve on this animation, I would try to envision my scene before shooting my reference to act more as the character I want to create. unfortunately, my body was very stiff when jumping for my reference, which meant I had to exaggerate my bounciness within the animation beyond my reference to get that light on the feet feel.
I feel I accomplished this well.

I went back and updated my Tina animation to include the reference video alongside it, and improve on with some suggestions by my tutor.

I struggled to come up with ideas for our expressive walk cycle. In the end, I went with a rather limp and moody character walk, emphasising the slight drag of the feet along the floor to give the feeling of laziness. I also included a sloppy swing in his arms that follow through to show he's not in a rush like someone who might use their arms to lead their movement when running and trusting forwards.
I feel I succeeded here. Two people I have shown my animation to, and straight away, they expressed that he seems moody, hitting the personality walk spot on.
To improve here, I would probably give him more impact when hitting the ground, to show that he isn't even putting much effort into standing upright, and so his body kind of just slumps down after each step, adding more exaggeration.

The push task was definitely one of the trickiest animations in this module to do, as it required not only large parts of the walk cycle knowledge but also required parts of my twist jump animation. Making a character walk, then push, then get up and turn, then push the other way, then get up and walk away has quite a number of different segments to animate. Although the tutor said my work was good, I felt the push in itself was quite bland and seemed very indicative of realism and the reference, which I usually aim for, but in this case I wanted to express more of a beyond-realism appearance, having him exert possibly extra force to envision him pushing a much larger, and heavier object.
To improve this animation, I would next time; use a better filming space and camera from behind, as my second reference video from behind didn't quite catch my feet at the beginning of the clips, making them harder to position on either side of the body when starting the animation.