I did a test animation first to get myself used to the animation process, as it has been a while since I’ve done animation. I decided to go with a blob-like character and try to do a very basic idle animation type.
Since we were doing pixel art, I thought 12 FPS would be good.
Using the first design for the normal character, I made a very simple walk cycle. Animating on ones and 12FPS again, I felt this would give the best result.
I split off the head and the body as I wanted a bouncy-type walk, I had the canvas on a smaller scale so I could move it by pixel. To get the bouncy effect, I started animating the head first, moving it up by one pixel for two frames and then I did the same for the body. For the 6th frame, I moved the head one pixel closer to each other so they touched and had them move down one pixel for the next frame. This would create a bouncy, bobbing look.
I thought adding a blink to the animation would make it look more cute so I put it in frame 7 when the head touches the body.
With the new version of the character, I did the same thing again but I wanted to add a bounce to the tail and ears. It was a bit difficult, as all I could manage was more of a flick than a bounce. I tried to make as minimal movement as possible but it didn’t seem to work.
This was the final for the normal character. I was finally able to add more bouncy animation for the tail and I added some bounce to the ears too.
The wind character was a lot easier to animate. The bounce for the swirlies was done by selecting them; changing the angle and correcting the shadows; it was the same for the body as well
The fire was slightly more difficult to do. Using onion skin, I tried to animate the flames on both the head and tail. For the flames on the head, I tried to give it that S-shaped flicker, which I think worked quite well. I didn’t want there to be too many frames so I tried to make it so there were only 4 or 5 frames per flame flicker.
The tail was a bit more difficult, as I had to get the bouncy effect in as well as the flame flicker. I tried selecting the ends and changing the angle but that didn’t work very well so like the head, I drew it by hand. I really liked the flame flicker from the tail and I think the fire character ended up being my favourite out of the 3 too.