Anim8or Community

I like the idea of the step stick, I'll give that a go.
I've had some reasonable success by simply placing a box or some kind of marker in front of the foot and then moving through frame by frame shifting the figure so it stays in contact with the marker.
It'd be nice if you could turn off tweening in anim8or instead of having to do all the double keyframes and stuff to get things to move how you want.

You can do that sort of thing with Terranim8or then import back into anim8or. I believe there's a tut on Terranim8or site for a TV with a moving picture which is along the same sort of lines as you want.