I'm just starting out in animation (one-man team! woo...) and I'm struggling to work out proper idle and combat idle animations for this character. I just can't seem to convey what I see in my head onto my pixelated canvas!

In the idle animation, I was trying to go for some calm breathing with her clothing rippling a bit in response--but I couldn't quite get it to not look terrible (especially the latter) so here's that:
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I feel like I would need to use subpixel animation to get a nice breathing animation for her, but I'm already struggling just using regular animation, haha.
Maybe I also need to slow it down further and introduce more pause at the extremes?

And this is the combat idle:

The goal for this was a simple animation for when she is engaging an enemy and she would hold a one-handed blade in her right (our left) hand.

Hopefully, this is remotely coherent...