Your animation is really good. I put a small clip of mine there too and became a fan. I'm mostly on facebook because my daughter posts pics there of my granddaughter but it's cool that there's a section for TVP now.
I use to look some video reference before animating, and do a lot of sketches.
I am in Animation Mentor school, and sometime I do 2d planning before go to 3d... this is one of those cases.
I have more 2d animation planning in my my website and blog.