Pixel Art Walking Animation #1

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I have been drawing a few pixel art walking animations, lately. This has been a lot of fun. Animation adds some life to the artwork and can add some goofy fun to drawing.

a walking animation of a pixel art style chicken hen

One of the lessons I've learned doing this is that subtle changes work better than detailed changes, especially at low resolutions. I started this baby dinosaur with the version on the left. It has spots that seem to jump around. I tried to get too detailed and it ended up distracting.

The middle dinosaur is better, but it's spots still wiggle in an unnatural way. Once I removed the details from the spots, it became much easier to watch the dinosaur as a whole instead of getting distracted by weird movements. I could even add some depth by having two arms without making it feel like there was too much going on.

a walking animation of a pixel art style baby dinosaur. Its spots change too much. a walking animation of a pixel art style baby dinosaur. Its spots change less, but still too much. a walking animation of a pixel art style baby dinosaur. Its spots change only slightly.

This reminds me of something "every frame a painting" says about Chuck Jones. He was a master of using the smallest movement possible to communicate. He is a wonderful animator and story teller, and there's a lot I can learn from him.

I made a few other animations, as well. This squid doesn't have much detail, but at least it's not distracting.

a walking animation of a pixel art style squid

I was able to get a little more movement out of this cowboy, but I kept details light to focus more on the movement.

a walking animation of a pixel art style cowboy