[C+C] "New school" animation practice

[Phoenix849]

Hello, folks. I'm yet a beginner animator, so I thought it's about time to start practicing on random stuff. I've become a fan of "new school" style sprites lately and by that I mean latest Glauber Kotaki's works (Deep Dungeons of Doom, Chasm, Duelyst), Capy's Super Time Force and not-so-much Hyper Light Drifter (some chars are waaay too flat to my taste). These games mostly feature no outlines, low color counts, small sprite sizes but very detailed and fluid animations.

I could not come up with any not extremely boring fantasy characters, so instead I decided to go with wasteland raiders theme, because it's like the best thing ever . Here is a basic machete meelee warrior I made in an evening. With your help I hope to improve and make my small private gang of desert raiders with few common animations each.





I think you like original pixel sizes here, so I've included not resized ones as well. I'd like to hear comments on my animation skills as well as color palette. Coloring is always extremely difficult for me. Initially they were temporary colors, but then I started animating and it ended like that.

[Decroded]

Pretty cool.
On second animation I'd like to see him do a running charge with sword raised after that.
There's a flicker I don't like on his thighs just after the sword is raised due to the resizing of the cluster, as if the top pixels should come up at same time.
I feel like the GO should flash twice too 

Idle cycle looks good to me.
Only odd thing is the sword looks a bit rubbery when it changes angle as if pixels near the hilt should change earlier than they do now.


Colours are ok but the scheme doesn't seem appropriate for the character. Typically he'd be a bit filthier I think so like oranges and browns.
That sword is going to get lost against many backgrounds and I don't think the blue suits it anyway. Perhaps a dark grey machette with light reflections (u might even be able to animate them).

[DHyd]

Hey,

That's really well done

The only critique I have is that the sword does look rubbery, some how it looks like the sword is curving up and down in the idle animation, as opposed to straight lines. Personally, I don't know how to fix this, I'm new to pixel art (but I'll be the best one day, mark my words). My guess would be, both the hand and the arm bend at the same time, thus making it look like 1 piece with a hinge joint. Make the sword bend either before or after the arm bends. - Once again, I'm new so I don't know if that will fix it.

Cheers,