1. The character is moving too slow
2. Its hard to identify this guy as a mechanic
Thanks for you comments. I'm quite new the animation stuff, and I was trying here to do 1-pixel movement per frame and avoid his feet sliding. But the idea of doing fewer/faster frames should cover this up too - and save some work. I wish I though of that at the start. In actual fact, I run this animation much faster and the feet to not correlate to the ground in the final game, so I think I could have got away with fewer frames anyhow.
Point 2 is not so important in context, but I think I will put a spanner in hit pocket somewhere.
Hopefully I will get better at shading over time - I'm having trouble with the small size too.
JonathanOfDrain: He is very blue, but he is in quite a colour-saturated game. I will post a link to this game when I get home. I could try toning him down a little. His eyes are on the same side mainly because I'm too slack to do an 8-way animation, and I use this angle to cover movement from north-north-east to south-south-east