Advice for a first time at animation. (Helicopter)

Good afternoon everyone!

So today's job was animation of a helicopter, I thought it would be a nice easy thing to start with as animating is entirely new to me. I apologies if I don't use all the right terminology.

Whilst I have had moderate success in using "on the spot" animations and using scripts to push the helicopter around... I feel I might be making some mistakes.

I'm already thinking I'm going down the wrong route on certain things. I also have some unknowns which don't help; like how I go about making the heli bank into turns when moving forward but not when its stationary and how strafing left and right fits in.

Right now I have a list of animations I think I need.
- Idle
- Forwards
- Backwards
- Strafe Left
- Strafe RIght
- Bank Left
- Bank Right

Side notes this isn't meant to be a helicopter simulator with flight physics its more arcade style controls.

I suppose what I'm asking is, if you were doing this how would you do it?

10hours... and all I got was a lousy forward animation.

 

IMO, you could try not to use script to control the movement, just use the rootmotion to move the heli around.
You could also add blendtree to get a better look.