Thank you, honestly it gave me some ideas. Here's some further updates:
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Spent the night reworking some stuff, and found that shading the shoulder area gave it a better look. Still preferred the arm movement on the original, however I'm trying to work on adding a back swing to the 3rd frame like the one in your animation. The obstructed arm in my animation only swings forward, but I need to find someway to make it swing backwards as your sprite clearly points out. Also, the standing frame needs work. Yours looks really good and I wanted to use it but it doesn't blend well with the other frames on my animation when I try to combine them. I'll probably find someway to add in these edits sometime in the near future, but for right now I'm pretty content with the result on the East moving animation.
What I'm having problems with now is a North moving animation. Feet are primarily the problem, but arm motion is another too. Any suggestions?
