I recently discovered how to do key-frames etc. in Blender and now to newbies who wish to learn to animate in it, its simple. You must know these Key Things about it.
When including a key-frame hit "I" on your keyboard. It will come up with the following options and what they mean...
Loc-Location
Rot-Rotation
Scale-Scale
LocRot-Location+Rotation
LocRotScale-Location+Rotation+Scale
(for game models these are the most vital)
When Animating a model you must always change the key-frame. To make the animation more slow as walking pace hit "UP" arrow key on the keyboard. But if your game is a ninja game and want fast-paced action hit the right arrow on the keyboard about 5 times, this will change the key-frame rate. If your animations go over the 250 mark click on where it says "SR2-Model" then click on "SR1-Animation" there should be a timeline click on where it says "250" and alter that till you have enough frames to perfect the animation.
Now going back to the animation part. If you loaded up your ready-rigged model or loaded up Ludwig which is linked underneath the guide. Now lets do something very simple. Click on the rig(bones) and then click on "object mode" and then click on "pose mode" this should make the rig go editable. Now hit "A" on the keyboard, this should know selected the whole rig, and now hit "I" and then click "lot-rot-scale" on the options. This is now your starting pose. Now hit the up arrow key, and then click on a random area on the rig and move it down, now hit "I" and then "loc". Hit the down arrow key, and now if done correctly it should return to its original pose, don't worry! Hit the right arrow key ten times very-slowly though you might realise the area you clicked on is slowly moving into its new pose.
Repetitive as it seems but you done your first animation in blender. Now that isn't as hard, most people claim it to be is it?
If you don't know how to rig I highly recommend this free already rigged model, most blender modellers may refer to him as Ludwig.
http://jasonpierce.animadillo.com/resource/ludwig/ludwig.html
We are the cost of a world gone wrong.
