The VG Resource

To be honest, it doesn't take 9 frames to do a good animation.

Turn it to 5 frames rather than 9. and don't make the foot disappear. Make it inside the cloak, much like MagikoopaWhy is his mustache streching? It should be moving up and down rather horizontally. Dont make him look like he's bouncing, bobbing up and down usually doesn't work like that. move him up by a pixel each frame.

it would also be good not to animate it that fast.

@megamario in reply to a PM which probably should have been posted in this topic.
to hell with angles,
never work in angles with pixel art its all about the pixels.
Frame 1
Right foot back. Left foot planted
Frame 2
Right knee out. Left foot still
Frame 3
Right foot out. Left foot back
Frame 4
Right foot planted. Left knee out.
Frame 5
Right foot still. Left foot out.
thats about what I would go with, though I have a tendency to find a way to put it into 4, 6 or 8 frames depending on the quality of animation I'd like, in your case 4 or 6 would suit the style nicely.
hopefully you'll know what to do with that.

K, well, another way to analyse a walk cycle, take a look at this video, I know that this video is about MLP, but the guy breaks down one of the characters walk cycles, this could also help you out for this, other sprites, and animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vhGGy3i6aA

I think this is correct.

It's looking better!

Here is an animation of the Merlon's forward pose.

It's good, but his mustache and star sphere should rise and sink with the sprite's walk. Right now it looks detached from his face and floating.

Here's the updated version.

Here is an update of Merlon walking in a diagonally downward direction.

Another update. I just made an upward diagonal pose of him walking.

He looks sort of like he has a limp. One part of his body's rotation holds while the other side of the animation bounces right back. It's hard to explain. The best I can say is make his body rotating the whole time instead of having some held frames

Why his is hood moving just up and down? That's literally the only movement in it. It needs to have more bounciness to it than it just shrinking up and down. The hood needs to expand out from the sides as it lowers as well as move with the character as he goes left to right. Right now it just feels unnatural and pretty static.

Also, there seems to alot of banding issues on the diagonal poses.

Okay, this should be better.

The back-diagonal sprite looks a lot better. However, the movement in the back-diagonal sprite doesn't match the front-diagonal pose. Try making the back of the hood sway more instead of just looking like it's moving forwards and backwards.

Now the back of the hood is swooping away.