Animated Bird sprite

[Seiseki]

Don't ask me what kind of bird it is..
All I can tell is that he's well fed :>

So I started working on this a couple of hours ago and now I'm stuck..
I think the left/right sprites turned out ok, but it's still kinda hard to read.
And oh, how I dread the front view animations, I don't even dare to attempt it yet..
Considering how impossible I thought this would be at first, I think I made some progress though.
But I'm unsure if and when both wings should be showing, right now it's just one wing.
And due to the perspective it looks like it's attached to the birds belly..

But any tips on how to do this/improvements would be appreciated.
It's possibly the hardest thing I've attempted so far when it come to pixels/animation.


edit: (jiggly pixel fix)

edit2: Here's an attempt to make the tail feathers waggle up and down, not sure if birds do that, not even sure if it looks good..




edit: *mindblown, I just noticed, by accident that flipping the sprite upside down gives me a simple 2 frame wing flapping animation.. woha..

[robalan]

Nice looking bird! I don't really have any critiques on the bird itself, but have several related to the animation.

My biggest critique is on the timing. The down stroke seems to have very little force behind it since the upstroke is just as fast. Also, the body should not rise in phase with the wings. The body should be highest 1-2 frames into the up stroke and lowest 1-2 frames into the down stroke, since momentum will keep it in motion until a sufficient force has been exerted to move it. Also, if you can swing it with your resolution, making the body movement more of a sine wave (faster in the middle, slower/hesitating at the top and bottom) would help.

Also, I'm not sure the tail waggle works for me. It looks much too wobbly. I think a tail wave would work, just not quite that quick.

Quick searching found this animation, in which you can see the force of the downstroke, the timing of the body rise and fall, and a more appropriate tail wave. Obviously your bird is in a much different style, but the timing principles should be applicable.

Overall, good start; I look forward to seeing the next iteration :-)