Thank you for the responses! Coloring still hurts my head, I feel like I have such a long way to go... Anyways, for now I will have to practice in traditional art and take a break from pixel art, lol. I live in NC and my computer got fried by the rolling blackouts from the hurricane. (I am writing this on my phone) Everything is gone except what I posted on here ; -; But I will remember the advice even if I can't put it into practice right away.

I'm sorry that happened to you.

Not sure if this is the case for you but, chances are, unless your computer was actually submerged _in_ the water, your art might actually still be salvageable on the hard drive. Usually when something fries from a power surge, it's either the power supply itself, network gear, or some small artifacts on the motherboard that fries (things that are closer to the power source). Your hard drive might actually still be fine. If you have it, I'd remove it and hang onto it (just in case) -- It's never a bad idea to revisit your old art, and for future reference, if you can find yourself a method to back it up that works for your personality and habits, you'll be set. I use imgur myself, but I used photobucket at one time too. I still have most of my pixel art across both services because of those various backups online. The working files for them... those might have fallen away to time... but as long as I have the pixels, I can still rebuild those if I need to.

Also, regarding taking a break from pixel art and learning coloring... I won't suggest not trying other mediums, but I do think it's important to point out that pixel art has some unique learning experiences you will not find in any other medium. Every medium teaches a unique skill. Even pencil and paper teaches one how to "be messy" with your art.
If you're struggling with coloring in pixel art, it might be important to mention that pixel art is actually the reason I (personally) learned how to "color" well. Had I gone to any other medium first to learn coloring, I probably would still be learning "how to color" my art.
Clearly, I struggled with coloring too. I was no prodigy. I just wanted to make art that looked presentable.
Many skilled artists might suggest the most important part of coloring is remembering that everything is made out of some kind of material, and that material gets its color-gradient properties (and texture/dithering) based on the surface roughness (or smoothness), the hue, and the ambient (environmental) lighting that happens upon it.
However, if that's hard to wrap your mind around all at once -- I totally get that.
In more practical terms -- "coloring" mainly takes place when hue-shifting your individual colors (as you pick them) to make them match better with the overall look of your image (as you go) -- which is the most important aspect of "color" that there is. If the colors don't match the image, the image fails as a whole and it doesn't matter _what_ colors are used anymore.
A pixel artist rarely has a full palette from the get-go, but they usually do have a small number of colors they stray toward (which really could be considered the "style" aspect of their coloring.) And in pixel art, when you limit yourself to a small number of colors (as pixel artists tend to train themselves to do), you start to "get" what colors will work in one place, and in what places those colors won't -- and the "magic moment" is when you get the "why" those colors will/wont work in those particular pixel placements. Once you understand this "why" aspect, you will totally (at some point) "get" the thing that broke it open for me.
Had I not done pixel art, I wouldn't have realized that the key thing I was missing was that value and hue/saturation only exist to emphasize (or de-emphasize) a color's presence to the viewer's eye/brain on a subconscious level. This key lesson in understanding color in visual design as a whole was probably the moment that broke me into a new level of art understanding.
And I wouldn't have gotten there (quickly or probably ever) without struggling with the colors of pixels that were too fat or too "something" and always wondering exactly "why" they weren't working no matter where I tried placing them to make them look "correct" to me.

I write this because you show a LOT of promise in pixel art -- and because of this, I suspect the same is true of art as a whole for you. Pixels are definitely one thing I think you should not step away from before you've learned all you can from them. It may be just my opinion, but I assure you it isn't biased -- Color selection is one of those things that pixel art is just great at teaching.
The "lessons" work better when you're either reducing the size of detailed things or creating larger things with a (very!) small number of colors that (mostly) vary only slightly (such as in an NES game mockup of an entire screen). By the time you're able to do these "lessons" well, you'll be a master of color in no time.

This, again, was pretty long, but I really hope you'll reconsider pixel art if you're seriously wanting to learn color.
You're on the right path to that -- I just think that you may be stepping away a bit too early -- and right before you've cracked it open for yourself.

PS:
Doing pixel art on the phone is terrible (I've been in your shoes, being without a computer to pixel on), but studying others' pixels posted on this forum when I couldn't pixel -- and taking and memorizing the advice and feedback given about others' pixels over a long period of time helped me to hit the ground running when I finally got a computer to try my hand at it again. The bits and pieces I picked up along the way really paid off when I sat down to actually do it. I found I had actually internalized much of it by that point, and my art improved by leaps and bounds since the last time I put a pixel on the screen. -- I've found no better forum or place to gain experience with art like that than Pixelation.

Just some food for thought.

Regarding the exaggerated thing -- One thing I've learned is that is that exaggerating motion is always a good thing as long as you're in the business of making it "read" better to the audience. To do this, you can do all sorts of unusual and unexpected things -- the only holdback in this is that you follow the laws of physics enough to be convincing in how quickly things move, speedup, or slowdown. Things such as scale and angle (sometimes) can be fudged, but rarely can you fudge angle (especially on keyframes), and never fudge both at the same time. Look into "breaking joints" -- The Animator's Survival Kit (by Richard Williams of Who framed Roger Rabbit fame) teaches a lot about it, and that this can work for "realistic" characters too. I think I bought a copy for 12 bucks on Amazon once. Highly worth the price if you want to know how far you can "push" animation in a realistic way.

Regarding "drag" of the feet -- I really meant let the toes lag behind the foot more in the passing positions.

Regarding the "robot" feel and the shoulder -- Keep in mind that distance (in pixel animation) rarely matters more than actual TIMING of the pixel transitions (and their volume shifts), and in the case of your shoulder, try not to make it thrust the elbow so far forward so quickly (otherwise it makes him kind of look like he's shoving his breast forward with such quick shoulder thrusting). Again -- the number of pixels it moves is actually fine -- it's just how quickly (or gradually) you allow it to transition between those 3 pixels that defines the subtle way it comes across to the viewer.

Regarding the "lean" forward -- I think it's actually fine as-is if he's walking fairly slow like an average person might walk to get something to drink or go to do some other basic task.


Overall -- It's definitely looking really good compared to version 1.0, so keep at it. The major point of pain from my perspective is how the shoulders move (and how they make the hand have to "flop" forward to keep the inertia correct.) That's really all I've got so far. Great job!

I want to point out that I have uploaded an animation of this character before :p


The string is magic, but I did realize it just disappears once the ball hit the ground.  I made it get sort of overdrawn and pull back towards the hand once the ball releases.  I still feel like the ball needs one more frame after it hits the ground, but I couldn't come up with anything that looked right or didn't make it seem slower.

Hehe -- I was only kidding! ^__^
The "Imabadass" pose just made him feel so much like Sasuke (to me) with his "I'm too cool to be bothered, but I guess I'll do it and maybe you'll shut up." attitude he clearly exudes prior to the animation. That's not a bad thing though -- just the impression I got.


Anyways, regarding the ball --

I think the problem is that it appears to be generating some kind of resistance to the "string" in your new animation before it is suddenly pulled, but that "resistance" just comes out of nowhere. Perhaps you could show the magic "string" attaching itself to the ball somehow (and possibly causing the initial anticipation before the "pull" -- the "resistance" to the pull being from the string "hitting" the ball to attach itself to it -- that you're looking for?)

Regarding the "attack" portion of it --

The "release" of the ball (where the string detaches itself from the ball -- and possibly slaps the ground after the ball takes off into the air) is a key moment to emphasize the impact and strength of the attack that will be flying toward the opponent.

That being said, changing the arc of motion to better match the energy exerted is a good option.

The resulting angle of bounce is too shallow for the direction the ball is flying (in order to maintain its momentum), which is why the ball looks like it is "slowing down" to the eye (even with a small number of frames).
If you want the ball to look convincing, have it hit the ground (from behind the arm) at a more obtuse (open) angle (*before* it bounces) than what it is right now. Currently, the "bounce" angle is too acute (closed/tight) to retain the feeling of a fast-traveling billiard ball.

The number of frames isn't the issue -- it's the angle of bounce and the speed you're trying to reach *after* the bounce that is at odds. Yeah, it works in anime that things seem to move at whatever magical speed the artist wants it to, but it only "works" because the artist keeps the magical movements as close to the action as science allows. It's just that the magical forces anime characters exude sometimes come from otherworldly sources -- and despite how it appears, these forces always stay grounded in physical rules and the angles and the quantities of force/energy used/exerted always remain consistent across the board.

"Magic" is not an exception.

Managed to throw this together in about two hours.  Only thing I'm iffy on is how the ball bounces at the end.  I want it to plink off like a billiard ball hitting an edge, but I don't think I quite got it right.  I'm really satisfied with the motion and the coat falling down slowly.

It's SASUKE!!

Lol -- jk


In seriousness though -- for the "plink" billard-ball thing, try shifting the ball in the *opposite* direction slowly first, rather than toward the direction it will be headed to "plink" off the ground.

Also, the ball "blur" should overlap the visible ball a bit more before it "stretches" to the ground (and maybe make that "stretch"/"blur" touch the ground in a single frame before the "bounce" frame to show hit has the kind of "hard-metal-ball-hitting-hard-metal-floor" that it looks like you're going for.

The green "string" you've got going on there should probably appear after the "bounce" (if he's putting it back into his pocket) and should act like a "sling" that released the metal ball and "pops back" a moment (to show the "release" of force) and create some recoil in the "visually-important" part your animation (that is, the act of the ball being released at a supercharged rate of speed into a bounce.) A "floppy" frame or two for the green string isn't a bad idea, as the bouncing of the ball could (and should) likely be happening in 2 frames anyway (which includes the initial release of force following the initial stretch of the green string.)

Again -- after the "plink" bounce, the "plink" blur should be NO MORE than 1 (2 frames MAX) if you want to keep the speed looking consistent (and fast). That third "small" blur frame just acts as a "slowdown" frame, which I really doubt you want.