I saw that I posted my icon in the wrong place...so here it is-the first animation and the sides.
I'm impressed it's not pillowshaded. Movements are pretty close to how they should be as well.
Anyway for the animations. We need to see more enthusiasm, let's start with the front walk for example...dont be afraid to drastically move pixels, this is what makes good animation.
Slide the outside foot more to the middle and make only half the back leg show.
For arms, put the arm thats moving forward down a couple pixels (diagonal if you cant get it to look right straight). When the arm goes behind him shorten it, you got this part right. Though I see a double outline near the elbow fix that...But wait only the 4th frame has it...Next time just copy and paste the original cause that 4th frame has alot more errors then the 2nd one. And to make that arm look good when it's going back; edit frame 1 just lengthen the arms 2 pixels above the knee's...Right now you have the arms at belt length thats not good anatomy.
P.S. Your greatest tool and reference when you're having problems with human anatomy is yourself. For example for the sides your arms go more straight down then the way you have it.
Well for one the shading on the north view is going the wrong way. When you flip icons like that and you have a specific direction in terms of light source, you need to remember to re-do the shading to match the light sources of the other turfs. The same applies to the Left view.
Unlike pillow shading, you can't easily get away with such shortcuts with out having to do some editing.
I'll focus on Front (South States...Frames 2 and 4 [just duplicate and flip dont make different ones]):
We're getting somewhere. Remove the light from his crotch and cut off half of the back leg to make it look like it's behind his front leg and move that front leg a pixel to the middle. The arm that goes foward doesn't have enough enthusiasm have it reaching out like it's going to pull something. You cant be afraid to move things around when animating, most of your pixels didnt move too far from the original positions, think fearlessly.
You meant something like this??
...looks a little weird, lol
Rofl, my bad, guess that didn't come out too well, I should have said "try it". But anyway part of being an animator is trying out many methods till you find the ones that look best. I put your animation in frames it looked like he just had one leg. So then I put the front leg back how it was.
The first thing I did was edit the back leg so it looks like it's moving in a good compatible motion with the other frames (standing and front).
But the most noticible change that made the difference between "good movement and bad was putting the forward arm over the back leg vis versa. Instead of doing the movement forward arm over forward leg which you wouldnt do in RL, it's just not natural (which is why people stress to use your body as a reference).
The only thing messy now is the arms which can be fixed by keeping the shoulders straight (unless this is some crazy run/ I edited normal shoulders the anatomy was off). Also the light is your best friend...Use this to indicate what is closest to us (like i did with the front arm).
I dont recommend you copy the version I made because it wont really make you better unless you understand the material. Why not make a less jagged version of the base and test out your newly learned techniques on that.
