Tail Wave Action Tutorial

I was having difficulties correctly making a wave action by simply posing. Using the graph editor to create the movement is much simpler and more effective. This is a short tutorial as to how I used the curves to create the wave action. 

Make some spheres in a direct line. I just created 5 spheres and scaled them down to give the illusion of a tapered tail. I'm working in a 40 frame cycle for simplicity's sake. 

Creating the up and down on the Y:

Place the down value on 1, 20, and 40. The ups should be set at 10 and 30. Set a couple breakdowns to favor the up position. If you play the animation now, the spheres will move all together.

Now to start offsetting:

In the graph editor, select the transform Y option for THE LAST FOUR SPHERES ONLY. Drag over the curve to select them all and translate them to the right. I normally translate them about 2 or 3 frames over. The decision is up to you, but just make sure that you maintain a constant offset throughout the file. This is how the first offset should look.

Continue to offset the curves by deselecting the next largest sphere's transform y in the graph editor until you have offset all of your curves. You should have the wave action for the Y axis. 

Now that we have the Y movement, we need the tail to sway on the X axis:

In a cycle, the tail starts from one side, moves to the other, and then back. This means that the extremes to the left (or right, your choice) will be on 1 and 40, while the extreme to the right will be on 20. Currently the spheres will all move together.

Using the same technique as before, offset the transform X curves.

Though they are moving separately, notice how the extremes on the X axis occur at the lowest extreme of the Y axis. I want the extreme of the X to occur midway on the Y movement. Think of the movement as the infinity symbol. 

To achieve this effect, select ALL of the transform X curves and translate them to the LEFT. (note: if you translate them to the right, the spheres will go under before you hitting the X extreme instead of over and frankly, it looks odd)  So again, translate the curves to the left. The amount is up to you, but keep moving and testing your animation until the movement feels right. 

When you're done, it should look similar to this.