Tips for animation

I'm not an animator. But I really like Lego stop motion. You don't need to make models of clay or whatever.

And I say a lot of tutorials on that.

First thing you should do is learn the Principals of Animation as it applies to all types of character related animation that you might want to do - including stop motion.

You can build your puppets out of foam, sponge, armature wire, clay etc - anything that is light and allows for movement and flexibility. Build your set environments to match your puppets and their size. And you can use your phone's camera with a tripod to take your photo shots with. 

1 second of animation generally takes 24 frames/ shots, but you can go slightly more or slightly less depending on what speed you are trying to go for some of your scenes. And although most people do recommend that you plan out your scenes using a storyboard and animatic (mainly for large productions, like feature films where multiple people are working on that project and for Pitch Bible Content if you're looking to market your work to sponsors), if you feel more comfortable just winging it since you're doing the work by yourself/ solo, (I assume), then you can do that too.

Laika Studios and some of their Staff such as Brad Schiff and Justin Rasch, often create alot of behind the scenes content that shows you their work processes so people can see how they make their Stop Motion works. 

They do recommend that studying/ using observational references on motion from Live Action Vids (ie vids on people or yourself, acting out a character's body expression, movements, reactions etc), is a valid technique that you can impliment if you're trying to make the animations of your characters more more realistically, as opposed to a 2D drawing poses method, since your characters are more in a 3D space and you're working with physics in real time.