Thanks! That’s some awesome art. I love your work! So a bit more about my specific process is: I use Aseprite which is great for pixel art animation (which you probably already know).
Some random tips I picked up and that I usually keep in mind:
- Play around with different timing for frames. Sometimes changing the length of one frame can make the animation.
- Utilize anticipation (the part before the action of a move, for example moving the characters arm back before a punch).
- Smear frames (used sparingly) can improve an animation so much, especially for really quick actions.
- Setup shortcuts to easily go back to the previous frame, the next frame and to switch between tags (if using Aseprite), this will speed up the process a lot.
- Depends on how you work, but I prefer sometimes first drawing the main keyframes of the animations (these are essentially the frames that are the start, end and any frames in between that would be essential to the animation. The keyframes are the ones that explain the motion completely and should be understandable just from these few frames. From there I create frames in between to flesh out the animation further.
- Don’t make the character too detailed as that will be a nightmare to animate everything. Keep it simple at first, you can always add small details and items once you’ve finished finding the motion of the animation.
- For characters specifically, I like to start with the head - drawing it in the first frame, then copying it to the other frames and move it around to get the basic motion of the head. I find it provides a good reference point for everything else. Then I do the feet to make sure the base of the character is correct and makes sense. Everything else can then be filled in more easily from there.
- Use onion skinning.
- Use references.
These are the things I can think of off the top of my head - but if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.