[WIP]Character for exploration platformer

[Aniki]

This is a character I created while practicing spriting humans.



I think he looks a bit strange, however I can't put my finger on exactly what's off with him. Which means it's probably either proportions or posture (or both).

Wondering if you guys had any advice.

Extra:

I thought it'd be fun to put him as the player character for a game, so I layered him and rotated his limbs in Aseprite to try and make a running animation.



Any advice on making him look at bit more serious and competent? He looks a bit like a lost child.
The game would involve a lot of exploration and I didn't want to make it look like he's bookin' it the whole time, but he certainly doesn't look like he's doing anything important the way he's running right now.

Thanks in advance!

[MysteryMeat]

Tilt him forward more and try to make the furthest extension frames on his arms more vertical. Right angles, like so!

There's a great book disney put out called Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators that covers how to create more forceful poses and movements pretty well, I reccomend seeing if your local library has a copy!

[Rosier]

I feel he looks a little stiff for an adventurer.  I'd look into finding a more dynamic pose for him to stand in, and also maybe brighten up his palette a bit.  None of the colors really pop as much as they should.

[Aniki]

Rather than brighten the colors I upped the contrast between them. I have a habit of clinging to de-saturated colors so I tried upping the saturation as well.



I also tried making his pose more interesting, as well as slimming his arm out a bit.

Not sure how to get his left arm in the back to look right. I'm also not 100% on the color scheme.

I'll take another look at the run animation soon as well

[32]

Try getting some movement in the spine in the run and I think you'll have a nice looking animation on your hands. I'd also suggest adding extra frames and pushing the movement of the hands and feet to a pendulum type timing, so they spend longer at the most left and right extremes and not long in the middle.

New drawing is looking much nicer, colours are looking good. I think you could pull the belt/crotch up one pixel. The head isn't quite centred on the shoulders. The shoulder pad on his right is a bit oddly placed, I'd move it out and down a bit. Right now it's not helping to sell that his shoulder is dropped. The shading on the chest is a bit muddy. Try not the shade the sash as a separate entity.

[Aniki]

Thanks for the advice 32. I pretty much did everything you said and I think it's looking a lot better.
The muddy-shading on his chest was supposed to be lappels,but it really didn't look like it, so I tried giving him a tie, I think it helped. (Though I think I can only tell it's a tie because I know what it's supposed to be)



Additionally, I watched a video MysteryMeat linked in a different thread about anatomical proportions and decided to use head-scaling. Wouldn't you know it, he is exactly 7.5 heads tall now.

Also I went ahead and took your guys' advice on the running. I'm not sure it looks quite right, do you guys see anything I could do better here?