Any advice for custom spriters? (How to animate sprites better)

[CyberneticCupcake]

I've been trying to draw my own sprites for games for a long time, but I've noticed my early works always come out a bit stiff-looking. I know it would take more work to make something more smoothly animated and with more flowing motion, but I don't quite know how. I've had better luck making larger drawings flow more nicely, but I don't know if I can scale it down without losing detail.