I have only done very simple key framing when it comes to movies and music, so might be wrong, But I think animation works a bit differently, especially when its a character. Because you usually key frame a single attribute like fade in / fade out in a movie, which doesn't affect anything else. Whereas if you key frame a character you might add keys to some part of the body and it might look good and all, but then later you might key frame another body part and suddenly it affects the rest of the animation. and at the same time you work in 3 dimensions, both when it comes to position, rotation and scale and on top of that you have to add timing, whereas you only work in 2 dimension in movies and music as far as I understand. (But might be wrong :D)

I have gotten the reaction a few times about beating once head against the wall when it comes to animation, I don't really understand why people say that about learning, especially a trial and error approach. My guess is as you also mentioned in your first reply, that peoples approach to animating in Poser and most likely Daz3D as well, is that because you have a fully rigged character available, which is easy to pose then animating them must be equally easy and when it ain't they get frustrated, which i think is a natural reaction. But there are no "this is the one true way of doing it" kinda solution, if you just add this key here and that key here, then everything works. So when im talking about starting simple and do a trial and error approach, its to learn what the different key does and what effect they have on an object, changing the curves etc. to me it just makes the most sense to start with a simple object to reduce complexity. And once that is understood you can start working with characters, which to me will be a lot easier if you are not fighting the animation tool at the same time and not really being sure what it can and can't do. So for me when I look at these tutorials, i don't really care what buttons he is pressing, but where he put his keys, which workflow he have, like starting with the hips, then the legs and adding more and more details. And sure it will go wrong a lot of times, but hopefully every time it does, you can figure out why and improve that way. I really don't think there is a lot of other ways to learn animation than trial and error. Because you never know what type of animation you are doing, what objects might be involved etc. So to me the bare minimum or best help is to get the principles and theory behind animation correct and learning the tool for actually doing something will come automatically as you practice and try to apply these things.

I don't hope you take this as an attack on you, because its not meant as such, more like a wondering, to why people wanting to animate (especially) always refer to it as being like banging once head against a wall. Animation is an art form just like learning to draw or creating an image in my opinion, you simply can't read a book and suddenly you are good at drawing, only practice and learning the theory behind it will help make it easier learn. I do agree, that its valid as you started out in your OP, that you were interested in getting help with the tool, because that is important, so nothing wrong in that. I just wanted to offer you another approach, should you fail finding someone.