Ask HN: Dear reseachers/engineers/artists how to practice computer animation?

I am deeply interested in computer animation and simulation. I have basic knowledge of animation, simulation, and modeling. I want to dive deep into the field so that I can catch up with the latest research and trend. Since I want to scale up, I am not able to identify the right keywords to search for. I only find content that is either simple or complex. This clearly means I am lacking practice in the subject.

I would be very thankful if some of you can show me the directions to get started. As a general background: I have an understanding of skeletal animation, FK, IK, motion interpolation, and so on. But I am clueless about how these are implemented in real-time applications. I want to get into crowd simulation, realistic human (quadruped) motion generation, and environment/physics simulation.

Thank you in advance. Have a nice day!