Seems that if I have automatic keyframing on when keying the camera it goes crazy with rolling rotations when I use the free-look camera mode. Solution is to turn the auto-keyframing off and manually insert the keys after using the free-look cam placement.
In order to make use of the NLA animation strip sequencing I needed to create the following short animations:
Leg blending
- Sway to left
- Sway to right
- Hanging centre
Wing flap
- Full flap
- Half-way flap
- glide position
- rest position
These strips became the toolkit for “decorating” the core animation of the butterfly. This really worked well with the whole start with broad strokes and work your way down approach to creative endevours.