New ref

[Helm]

In a nut-shell what Souly is saying and with which I concur is that you've learned to animate wrong. Well... not as drastic as that sounds, but give it some thought. You've learned to animate from looking at certain computer games and extrapolating the fancier animations from them while at the same time you're ignorant of the fundamentals of motion and how the human body motors around. This leads you to making fancy effect animations that your peer group elsewhere will commend you on, but the basic animations of your dudes are still jello and rotation.

By rotation I don't mean copy-paste, I mean you treat each limb independently and you fold the body like this, and you turn the leg like that. Whereas a human body that goes through a motion does so on the whole and the nuance conveys emotion. And by jello I mean that your dude has no spine or joints, or to be fair since you'be been getting better, he tries to have them but gives up on difficult frames.

You're not aware of how the human body works and you need to work on this, away from these small pixel art animations. Do fundamental studies. And as far as animation goes, I'm not an expert, but it seems to me you're winging it too much, you're not relying on solid keyframes. A good animation should work with just its keyframes if needed. From that duck and roll, what is keyframe and what is inbetween? What would I take out and what would I leave in? There's no strong identity to the purpose of the frames.

[Tuna Unleashed]

Sooo... I think the gist of that was either stop pixeling or work on bigger stuff where the anatomy is more prominent for now?

[hsn2555]

o.o i felt like editing some frames ..

[Tuna Unleashed]

Ooh, nice edit.

[Jad]

Let's break it down

1.a More studies! Less jello-man. We need to feel that your character is constructed out of believable masses. You can learn that a million ways. One of them is to just keep at it the way you're doing it now, and let the brain do the rest subconsciously but that's a slooooooow and unreliable way to do it. Try different things, I'd say. Draw from life? Use simple building blocks to make this guy's body. Work on construction - not super advanced construction to make abstractions of muscles and whatnot (this is on another level and I'd encourage you to study that as well, heh. But on the other hand, so should I.) but just getting to know the building blocks and proportion of A MAN until you can do it WELL and RIGHT.

1.b Now that I'm at it - Learn to draw good 3d things in 2d space. The things you produce feel flat - like you don't really get how perspective and foreshortening changes the appearance of something 3d conveyed on a flat surface. So yet again with the simple construction advice - Learn how to build up believable forms (both human and object) that look 3d in 2d, JUST SO YOU CAN ABANDON IT LATER. See what I mean? I learned how a human face is constructed through stupid how-to-draw-manga excercises - they gave me the tools to make abstractions of complex 3d forms and taught my brain how to break complexity down into simple shapes that are easy to draw and understand, and to detail it from there. So. I suggest you do the same.

2. KEY FRAMES. I want to see some frames that convey his actions here. Single frames. If you could - please post a sequence of frames that best convey this motion. No more than 4 or 5. Do that and I'll try to help you from there. You have a knack for animating stuff, (YOU DO. Ass-patting for the win, getting critique shouldn't ALWAYS feel like having a plank smacked into your face, although sometimes it totally should. Oh, and also I'm sincere, of course, I like your animatey stuff : D)  so I'd like to help you get better.

Anyways, yeah. Regarding effects and pewpew you've more or less got it down. So let's get cracking on the rest!

[Mike]

I would just like to say that I think it's good that the standing frame takes time for recovery.  That way you can't dodge repeatedly and have to endure some punishment if you end up dodging when you shouldn't.

As for critique, I'm guessing that you straight ahead animate all of your stuff instead of making sure key frames look good before going into inbetweens.  Also I've noticed you get a lot of inspiration from Shonen Jump Super/Ultimate Stars which I can tell is really helping making your animations look particularly bad ass and flashy, but all the flash in the world won't cover up missed fundamentals and principals of animation though it is capable of making me blind from your flaws I can tell that the others aren't so easily swayed.

I'm thinking that maybe this will help you

http://www.frankanollie.com/PhysicalAnimation.html

Unfortunately it isn't as easy as to just read from a list, you need to know what it means.

I just want to say that you are doing a great job so far and you have major ambition and that is one of the most important things for a person.  You can be a great animator but if you don't have the ambition to keep nurturing it, it will all go to crap.  Use it or lose it as they say.

Oh and one more thing you can't get great over night and if you really want to finish your game I think it might be best if you take critique up until it's past your skill level.  I'm not saying it's bad to take critique not at all I'm just saying know your limits.

[Tuna Unleashed]

I actually haven't used any JUS references for this sheet but I have for older ones. I
m trying to steer clear of that. Anyway, thanks.

[Shrike]

You've already gotten mucho critique, but I'm a gymnast so I thought I'd help.

What your character is doing right now is impossible.  The way he lands, I mean.  When he appears out of mid air, instead of those two clumsy frames where he crouches and sticks his leg out, have him go right to the roll.  Also, the roll is wrong.  If I'm doing a dive-roll, which is more or less what he's doing, my arms are stretched out to the maximum; then, the minute they hit, I tuck my head and my feet and legs just tuck and follow.  After one or two rolls I simply stand up, as my momentum is lost in the roll.

All I can say ATM.  Nice animations.
Shrike

[Emtch]

One thing that would be much more practical for the character would be if he used the momentum of the somersault to stand up, instade of first stopping and then rising up.
It's a basic move that I'm sure you've done in gym class.

[Shrike]

That's more or less what I meant.  Sorry if not clear.  We do it both ways, ackshully... it depends on how much we roll.