HEY there....you remind me of me when I had more fun with pixelart. this does look like a lot of fun...I hope you keep it up, hope you escalate it into a full spriteset of a completely playable sprite just WAITING for someone to programe him
I can relate with your luuuv for motion blurs...I see you're starting to tell the little nuances that make each motion blur different..fun isnt it? =o
The connection between the hand swipe and the previous dont link AT ALL and that is only excusable in a game, there's no game engine here to stop your animation from flowing perfectly. You seem to be getting lazy at the points where each move links with eachother....how can you justify frame 22-23? I mean you just flipped the dude :p. Dont understimate that stuff, it can be really fun to animate your character spinning around on the air...or making his limbs bigger...You have a guy who has the special ability of making his limbs bigger, dont WASTE that! you can have fun making things grow slowly between each attack, making him shift weight as he adjusts to his growing parts.
Now, for the actual way you structured your anims...you seem to atleast instinctually know about anticipations and overshots...which is what your character does before and after the action, respectively. Problem is you're kinda doing them the opposite way of how they're supposed to go.
Your anticipations (frames 1,2,3) have the character slowly inching toward the action...that's not really the point, you're supposed to show the character building tension and impulse, I actually think it would be a LOT better if he slowly moved the opposite direction of the attack...think of any metalhead before he bangs his head in...he's inching backwards.
You also rushed those inmaterial jaws closing in, you can barely see that they're jaws at all...let them lay open for a couple of frames or two and then gnaw down.
Now for the actual action, the idea in extreme fast and forceful moves moves like these is to pace things so you see how the movement starts and how it ends but very NOT of what goes on in the middle. That gives a great sense of acceleration, of exponential growth. Think of the golden ratio, think of the fibonacci spiral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fibonacci_spiral_34.svg see how each section is much bigger than the last? that is the feeling you're trying to go for.
The motion blurs are only meant to bridge between the beggining and the end, so there is really no point to them in frame 12-13, where the claw actually covers very little space. I know it's become kind of customary to use them as a symbol for slashing but if you just waste them on inbetween frames it doesnt even look like you know they symbolize slashing, it looks like you dont know their function.
Your overshots (frames 15-18), much like your anticipation are built in reverse..again, the idea is that the force of the movement was so much the character loses a little control because of it, so after the big swoosh disappears, he's trying to regain the pose he's supposed to have....it shouldnt be inching forwards continuing the path of the movement, it should be inching BACKWARDS.
The part where his hand becomes a big heavy metal hand is probably the weakest in the whole thing, since the whole point of the motion is that his hand is really heavy and clunky, but you cant feel the weight to it AT ALL. I see you were going for a diferent kind of motion blur that distorts the form a little less and just stretches the form...but it doesnt really work.
That was some clever stuff at the last slash where he's skipping on his foot...obviously not a good fight tactique but it looks pretty cool...gives him some character :p
Might join the fun and post an edit later
