Animation Help

[Soup]

See I am trying to make an idle animation for him. What I want him to do is to bob sort of up and down getting smaller and bigger repspectivley.

The problem is I have no idea how to tackle this because I suck at animation. So help would be apriciated.

[Stwelin]

you'll need a solid structure if you even want to approach animation with this thing. It's just too weightless, it lacks volume. (and yes i know that since it's lineart it's hard to have volume, but you'll have to start somewhere.)

[Soup]

Thanks for the tip, so I had to rework it

Second Row First One.

[Blick]

I'm confused.

[Xion]

Yeah, what's with the heads?

[The B.O.B.]

Yar, whats up with the Street Fighter heads? I'm guessing you used a photobucket account, resaved it, but the site kept the older version and displayed it, instead of the newer saved file. Happens to me all the time. Just go back into the file, and rename it, then upload it again in photobucket. Changes will be present. If not, Then I really don't understand why you showed the other heads? Are you trying to make it more like a Capcom styled sprite, to show comparison to the others?...

[Soup]

It was used as a comparasin

[TheAbyss]

Oh well that line art makes the snail look less blocky! 

[AdamTierney]

Don't animate line art. Detail it before you even bother to move it around, especially with something as solid as a snail's shell. Also, consider the size that this sprite needs to be. Unless you're going to be putting in crazy, Metal Slug boss-style detail, there's no need for it to be that big. Try animating something under 32x32 first. And don't make out your box. It's clear that when you pixelled him you bumped into the edges, and you're going to need some room to get him moving around.

- Adam

[konjak]

When I animate I always have a finished sprite, first of all. You're going to spend hours filling in all that color over and over later, when you don't need to.

Generally I then pick out the key parts like hands, feet and the head, then erase everything (not erasing the initial frame, of course, that would be dumb) and move all this small bits without changing their appearance so that I have the motion done, then I fill everything in inbetween... it saves me the trouble of finishing frame 2 and having frame 3 not fit.

But then again, I don't have much idea how I animate, it usually just turns out well... I never imagined I'd be any good at animating in particular, people have just said I am. 

Just don't animate lineart like Adam said, and make some sort of template so you don't have to scrap lots of work halfway.