How to animate tiny legs?

[alanz2223]

Hello I would appreciate if anyone could give me some advice or links on any tutorials for animation. I am trying to animate two small legs but I cant seem to get it right. I want my sprite to run towards the right.    

[Gors]

I have this sprite that may give you inspiration.



feel free to study and dissect the sprite, if you have any doubts ask me.

[The Scarlet One]

I modified the animation in to two examples depending on what you were going for.
Just remember only one of the legs is going to cross in front of the other.

[Gors]

don't forget that the whole feel of the sprite is going to influence the animation. Sometimes, a choppy 2 frame animation may fit more with the artstyle/character you have.

[The Scarlet One]

I don't know, even then, 2 frame can look bad. I say for a simpler look go for 4 frames, 3 frames at minimum. (although running with 3 frames can be hard to pull off)

[DragonDePlatino]

Hmm...like Gors said, you might want to stick to a simpler animation style with something like this. If you have large legs that move a large distance, then it's good to have a high number of frames. But for small legs like this that move a small distance, you'd be better off going for a "retro" animation style. Cave Story+ is a good example of this.

[SmithyGCN]

There's also the matter that, in a run animation, at least one frame should have both feet off the ground otherwise it will look like a fast walk. However, I wonder if that's helpful for legs that tiny.

[Kelvin]

The legs never pass each other, so it looks more like a crab walk. The legs should move all the way forward and back, accounting for perspective, of course. Notice how Gors' character has the foreground leg overlapping the background leg when its forward, so the perspective is preserved without having to rotate the character. Try doing a simple 4-frame run, then add tween frames when you feel it looks right.

[alanz2223]

Thank you for the words of wisdom, I definitely received much more than I expected. I will try to create a running animation and post it here to have you guys critique it, see if I learned something. Thanks!

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One last piece of advice, sort of not related to animation. How can I go about re-sizing the sprite without having it look distorted when it re-sizes? I notice that when they are seen at normal size they look distorted but when you zoom in they look much more crisp.

[Gors]

there is no way to make the sprites be zoomed out and look crisp, unless if the sprite is already resized. Zooming the sprite in works because it just increases the pixel size, but there's no way to do the inverse process.