[animation study] Super Pumpkin Girl

[Bombshell93]

hello again, I wish I could be on this forum more often! but work is work.
Anyway onto what this post is about, I have gotten attached to a character design and a game idea recently, but in short, I suck at animating, admittedly I don't get much practice animating I'm often drawing stills, but I'd love to get into the swing of things so I might be capable of animating on my own.
Pumpkin Girl! a pumpkin head in nightmare land whose boyfriend Scare Man has got in bad with a mob and has been kidnapped, Pumpkin Girl has set out on an adventure to save Scare Man and brave the Creepy 6 and Mob boss himself, defeating them should she need to.

I'm dropping the Captain Plump design for something more fitting in the style, but hopefully the other 3 give you an idea of the theme and style of the characters and the way in which I intend to animate them, in short I'm thinking disney / warner bros cartoons.
For the moment sprite wise I have a pallet, I was at 1 point considering making it a NES compatible game but it would defeat the purpose of animation practice, I would be too restricted in terms of space for expressive animation.

I may drop the smaller sprite above and stick to the bigger sprite, it makes more sense on modern resolutions.
for the moment I'm stuck for places to start, I was hoping someone might have a thing or 2 to say about idle animations, in the mean time I'll probably sketch some frames and see how they look in pixel form.

EDIT:

first draft idle animation concept

I think it lacks the movement flow I want, it seems okay but I'd prefer something more exadurative.
Not to mention this looks a bit more like shes thrusting her hips than swaying them.

Any and all comments and crits are welcome and greatly appreciated,
Thank you for reading,
Bombshell