First Animation Effort

I preface this post by saying that I am in no way an animator.  In fact, I can only say that I dabble in the art of drawing in general.  Being that I am the only person working on this game, I am forced to develop, among other things, the sprite animation for all elements of the game.

The most robust animation in this particular game is going to be the walk cycles, specifically the walk cycle for the main character (and for the maid (spoiler!!!)).  Drawing these animations is something I've been dreading due to the inherent tedium though I'm at the point now that I'm getting annoyed by testing with a static image.  Said annoyance has escalated to the point necessary to raise my motivation to the level necessary to delve into the walk cycle. So here we go:

First attempt at a walk cycle

This is the forward walk cycle.  It ended up being eight frames which seems excessive looking at old NES walk cycles, but it looks decent.  I will most likely get annoyed drawing eight frames per direction (8*4=32).  To draw the animation I'm working off a base image and tracing in vellum so I can see the frames progress as I draw along.  Looking at the animation now I seem to tend downward in my drawing, though that may just be a consequence of the paper folding and I can probably clean that during digital inking. 

Before making this final I am going to tinker with the prospect of a lower frame count, though eight may just end up being what I leave it at, which may be fine since there's only one thing I really need to animate to this extent.