I just moved the gun towards the camera over two frames, and rotated it, then told it to go back to the start after 5 frames. This obviously looks terrible. As a newbie to animating, whats a good way to go about a firing animation?

The FP animation tutorial by Jeniffer!! has a segment on firing which I think explains it pretty decently (his whole series kicks ass to be honest):

http://www.mediafire.com/?93mdbt9dyn1 (shooting)

Also gonna put the reloading segment here too because this is a really good tutorial.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8s0mc32qxul (reloading)

thanks, downloading now!
oh and really fast, is there a way to make a crosshair or a spot or something appear in the dead center of the current view? for orgins?
Edited by abkarch on Aug 30, 2011 at 09:08 PM

Create a small sphere and move it forward from the 0,0,0 point of view I think.

All my firing animations are 9 frames. The recoil peaks at frame 3 or 4. I also offset the rotation of the gun by 2 frames, so the gun starts moving back at frame 0 but doesn't start rotating upwards until frame 2. Then frames 4-9 are returning to origin.

It would also help if you were to look at a video of a gun firing that is similar to the gun you are animating.

I believe most videos however are side shots of guns firing, rather than what would be "first person" firing, so what I said might not be helpful as I wanted it to be.