So, I've been planning something, and I've been experimenting a lot with style. I'm crap at animation, and I like the idea of using digitized videos/photos. (A process that I've found fairly simple). So far I've done nothing I like with backgrounds, but as for characters I was thinking something along the line of this very quick example:
(http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc46/dntlookdown/stand.png)(http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc46/dntlookdown/experimentalSTYLE.gif)
Something easily editable with a drastic reduction in color. If I were to draw and animate this from scratch it would take me at least 10x longer. (Just the way my brain works). Adding more frames is something I've contemplated on, but in my opinion, seeing this in a test game with drastic scale changes, isn't making much of a difference.
I was also considering making the game black and white. So early on in planning. I just need some opinions. ;)
A lot of people aren't going to say this, because it's a fundamental law of animation I'm talking about breaking here, but leave that exactly as slow and choppy as it is right now. Yes, it's slow and choppy. However, it has a certain style and personality I like. Don't change it.
Since you are going from a video/photos, you'd benefit here from importing more frames and inheriting the smoothness that realistic movement provides.
If you're going to stick with so few frames then slower animation speed tends to look better. One thing I would definitely correct is the single frame where his entire body shifts back several pixels. Something else for the future: try to display your animations on a neutral color like light to mid gray, gray-brown, etc. Displaying dark colors on black makes them unnecessarily difficult to identify.
Thanks for the opinions! And I'll remember to use a more neutral background. I'm contemplating on somehow importing the body parts into flash, and animating with the bones feature so I would only need one photo to chop up. Also, this would add more frames while keeping somewhat the same style. I'll post soon with a finished example.
The only downfall is that I hate how flash handles.
EDIT:After a being in flash and cleaning up the final animation for quite a while, this is what I came up with:
(http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc46/dntlookdown/thesuitor_character.gif)
It's very much different than the first, I know, and it lost a lot of it's original style. But I just might like it better myself.
And an experiment with a background:
(http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc46/dntlookdown/testroom.png)
I think the animation is an improvement, though you if you look at his head and torso they are a bit too static compared to the body. I'd go in and add a bit of head bob and some animation on the bottom of his shirt where it's just sticking out like it's solid. Other than that I think it's pretty good and the background seems like it would work with the sprite.