I tried to create an animated piece for last week's challenge where you had to animate hair, but I found out about it waaaayyy too late (I practically hadn't visited PixelJoint or opened Aseprite since my last post, until this week), so I basically only dedicated a few hours to it this weekend, and with only 20 minutes left until the deadline, this is all I could manage to put out (and since it's VERY unfinished, it cannot be submitted to the gallery in this state, so I'm posting it here... hopefully someone'll reply this time).

It's a shame, but at least I practiced some, and this is A LOT of practice for someone like me who doesn't draw a lot. I also don't have much, if any, experience animating, so this took a lot of effort. It feels like I have a good understanding of how to animate, I just need lots of practice, but I get discouraged easily, so I'd appreciate some tips about how to deal with that.

Anyway, even though it's a pretty rough sketch, I still love the results and see a lot of potential in it. The idea is that my three metalhead characters (Nicolas, Leonhart and Roderick from left to right) are at some metal concert and headbangin' to the music. That's the first thing that came to mind when I read what the challenge was about.

Nicolas, the one on the left, is doing the devil horns sign with his right hand and holding a beer in the other (maybe he's a little drunk already, as some beer is flying out of his cup).

Leonhart, the one in the middle, is playing air guitar while wildly rocking his body back and forth (clearly, the most excited of the group).

And Roderick, the last one on the right, is standing there with his arms crossed, but still obviously enjoying himself as he's banging his head (as much as his pose allows), and tapping his right foot to the beat of the song.

I wanted the three characters to display their distinct personalities through this action, to practice animation with three different styles of headbanging, and also to make the piece more varied, because it would've been really boring if I had just copy-pasted the same animation twice.

Pic 1: initial sketch (it used to have more frames, about 14, but I removed some to make it snappier)

Pic 2: same sketch, but with some crudely drawn hair (I realize the hair animation here is pretty bad, but I just wanted to see what it looked like with hair, and also wanted to have a basic idea of how it would flow)

Pic 3: this is where I decided who to focus on first; I chose Leonhart, clearly the most complex one, for some ungodly reason. I redid the sketch, trying to exaggerate the gesture more, to prepare for the next step. I also added hair and tried to actually animate the flow right, but I'm still not satisfied with it.

Pic 4: attempted to start working on the final animation. Didn't go so well, and I somehow forgot to keep his left foot on the same level in every frame lol. This is because I'm not yet used to reusing parts of other frames for body parts that don't move a lot. Drawing the head was surprisingly easy and fun. Drawing the "in-betweens" of the entire body, however, is the hardest part for me.

Even though I couldn't finish any of the characters in time for the weekly challenge, I still want to finish this somehow. The challenge rules stated that we had to include a background; I had planned to make a dark background with animated flames or something like that, but since I don't have to worry about that anymore, I might not use a background at all (this is how I initially pictured it anyway).

I'd like some advice on how to animate something like this correctly, or how to deal with this as a beginner. If my animation looks off in a way I didn't notice, please tell me so! I really want to improve, but most importantly, I want to finish this piece and make it as close to ideal as possible. Just finishing it would be enough; I can fix it even more after that, but I really don't know how to proceed, it's kind of overwhelming right now.