I made a small edit: media.giphy.com/media/3o6EhRQKVBAyRO69RS/giphy.gif I tried to give it a bit more weight by making his hair lag one frame. In this way it kind of follows his bounce, as there's always a small delay before hair is affected by motion of the body. I also edited the timing just a little bit. I took 0,15 seconds for the extremes, 0,08 seconds for the first in-between and then 0,12 for the third (so it's 15, 8, 12, 15, 8, 12). Hope this makes sense. (edit: now that I see it in a browser I think my edit is a bit too fast overall)
Oh, I got you. Well that animation has an extra frame on top. Improving timing didn't help much I guess -
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/101358177/0610.gif (0.1 for extremes, 0.06 for middle frames)
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/101358177/1015.gif (0.15 for extremes, 0.1 for middle frames)
Sorry for being kinda vague, it's more difficult to put into words than I thought :) I think this one really shows it: pixeljoint.com/pixelart/31255.htm. It has a clear but subtle pause at the highest and lowest point of the idle/breathing animation, which gives it a sense of weight.
Thanks for the comments!
@Opacus - Interesting, I tried to avoid that lag. Could you define "pause at the extremes" with other words or maybe edit timing?
Digging the sprites! I think the idle animations feel a bit stiff. I think they'd work a lot better if they had more of a bounce in them (for example: by making the movement of the hair/horns lag 2 frames behind the rest). I think switching up the timing a bit might also make them feel somewhat more natural. I think giving them a bigger pause at the extremes will help achieve that.
oh wow ! Axe's hair is very well done despite the mirroring
Thanks for the edit. I will get back to this later as I feel like my mind needs to forget current animation to compare.