YAY chocobo! Yes mounts will be available to transverse the world,allow more loot to be carried and in some cases used to attack. As for the one in the town, no you wont be able to mount it as it's the mount of an NPC merchant.
Ive also been drawing some concept art of different species so I could talk about that a little later.
As of last week Ive been working mostly mapping.Progress is going extremely well considering how much we have when the game is barely Three(3) weeks old.
Im guessing your talking about the walk cycle. the base isnt 100% complete and i chose 4 frames for the time being. no overlays yet and wont be any until final stages of development so i'd say i have a lot of time to go back and polish.