Hi,

In my opinion, if you want to stay with custom animations made by you, then there is nothing out there which is both inexpensive and easy. Custom animations take money to make them easier, otherwise you must make them manually. Some software allows you to create paths which avoids much of the frame by frame work, but if you want things easier across the board, then that takes money.

Blender is probably the best no cost way of animating, but many find it not so easy. Mixamo/ Mixamo Fuse is one of the "easier" ones and has nice quality, but it takes money. Look at the license - perhaps they let you use the free version if you don't include it in a sold product of yours - I don't know. There are no cost student and/or indy developer versions of 3D softare, but here again that takes effort on your part to create art.

Real artists are those that make things themselves rather than taking others' work and claiming credit as an artist, just as food for thought. Sorry but there is very little out there that is both easy and no cost. No free ride to glory exists as far as I know in the animations area.

The plugin I use right now for Blender is the BEPUIK plugin. It works very well! It is the best way to do hand animation if you have to end up doing it that way.

I don't know if you'll find the information useful, but there was another recent discussion on a very similar topic, including brief mention of using a Kinect -- take a read, some of the discussion and suggestions are probably relevant.