Animations observations

Since i've been working on my animation now for a month or so, I have rediscovered the troubles of animating characters and the amount of work that it entails. When i did my first animation a year ago, i believe my animation was 15 seconds long, and it took me about 2 months of work. ( And after all that work it was still sub par in my eyes) It had a small little walk cycle, no facial movement, no environment effects, nothing other than the characters movement and a prop.
         So when i began wanting to tackle another animation this year i dreamed big thinking that i could put in the tedious hours of work that it takes to make a simple animation. I read blogs of animators, articles about how to build stories and how to develop them and studied walk cycles for multiple class periods. I prepared to make this animation like Rocky before his big fight, wanting to know every single technical aspect behind animation possible. Maya was my mountain and i was very determined to climb it. Well i started to animate and i set key points and got as OCD as possible with every movement that my character would make. But even after a month of work i noticed that the actual movements still needed hours of work and i had maybe 10 solid seconds of just basic movements, not even movements that pertained to the storyline. Frustrated i was easily discouraged and even more in awe with the studios that pump out animated series with 22 episodes in a season and have two seasons a year. Granted these major studios have hundreds of people and they all have very specific jobs that pertain to getting the ultimate goal accomplished. So naturally i went to the source for how to create good animated story as efficient as possible.
      I like to unwind and watch my favorite animated shows on Netflix for hours at a time because of the readiness of any animation i desire to watch. But it was when i was watching one of the newest shows i enjoy "Bob's Burgers" that I discovered a trick that will vastly help with my animation. The trick is being conscious about where you're going to have the camera. In the hours of show that I watched there was lots of movement, especially walking, but how do they animate so many characters walking so often every show. I'm sure repetition has a lot to do with it, once you move one character the same way hundreds of times you get much faster at it and become even better. But oddly enough they hardly ever show a full walk cycle. I noticed that they often only show from the hips up on characters when they are walking. It's genius. You need half the amount of animation and the viewer still understands that the character is moving from point A to point B. They may go an entire episode with out ever showing the feet of a character, you now only have to worry about the fluidness of the arms and face.
      Once I picked up on this clever little trick they used in this one show, i noticed how they use so many other tricks like showing that a character is opening a car door, then cutting to a scene of them in the car already, you dont actually see them get into the car. Just look for the amount of time that you see the whole characters body compared to the time that you only see a portion of the body. Its the little tricks like this that save the animators hours and hours of work and allow them to pump out multiple episodes a year and still have the story line be the primary objective. Since i have caught on to this i will be adapting my animation to this same sort of style and it should save me a lot of time and allow for less error when it comes to seeing a fault in the animation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEAKZponPXQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibFlycazdHk&index=3&list=UU7izVkAGKmCo0XSRZF8jkNA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J0vnHkEtw8