Life Drawing in Animation: Movement

Finding a model to do multiple poses that establish a directional movement, then that's almost the same as using footage of that as reference. In fact, that can even benefit you if you are animating a character in a particular art style, by drawing the shapes of whichever art style the character is drawn in. You normally have to observe a real person acting out the scene you're making to gain enough reference to pull it off. It might not even be a basic walk-cycle, but more complex actions that may involve interacting with other objects/people. This would require knowledge concerning real-life people performing said actions. Having enough life-drawing experience will enable you to draw the basic shapes of the required movements when looking at reference and getting the shapes down in your character's actions.