First try at pixel animation (walk cycle), looking for advice

[MortMcMoneyman]

And friend and I were recently talking about hyper light drifter and its amazing pixel art. During the conversation I said something like "I havent tried myself, but I would imagine it to be pretty difficult to make this look like actual movement". I noticed nothing is stopping me from experiencing it myself, so i opened up paint.net and made this:


The character I had in my head was a barely known character from prince of persia: fallen king.

I know you will pull your hair out from seeing this, but I personally dont know what is wrong exactly, i think the bounce is a little weird. Ignore the hair for now, i wanted to wait until i have the rest right before i touch that, the bounce probably affects hair alot. I planned on changing the color of the body later on so that there is only one base and one shadow color (but regardless of that shadows are probably not in the right places, please tell me). Also, anatomy?
 

[astraldata]

I know this is an old post, but I feel it deserves to be addressed.

First, the issue is, if you've ever seen a person run fast, as the angle of the body suggests, the head and arms move a lot farther forward and bounce a lot more, both up and down AND forward and back, usually at a diagonal in this view. Another thing is, on the legs, there's no hint of the hips or shoulders turning in opposition as he runs -- this is kind of mandatory for that kind of locomotion.

The distant arm kind of doesn't do much and suggests the shoulders aren't turning as much as they really would in a brisk run like this. The arm would disappear, not hang forward for no reason (unless he's looking to grab something with that hand). Make it straighter and swing a bit more a bit sooner too, and you'll be on the right track.