I'v been struggling recently when planning out my sprite animations, making the finished animation look a lot different than I envisioned. I'd like to know if anyone has a lot of experience with making believable animations and can tutour me when I need help with specific animations. I understand there are great tutourials out there for working on animations but I'd really like someone I can turn to and ask for advice in planning an animation. For example, right now I'm having trouble making a simple idle animation for a game sprite. First off it was much to over the top and I ended up finishing it (for the sake of practice) into a heavy breathing animation

My next attempt was more of a 'limbering up' animation but this didn't turn out quite right either

My most recent attempt isn't looking to hot either

As you can see I have no real trouble with the secondary animations (like clothing moving with the character or shadows) but it's just that basic primary animation I always screw up on. If anyone can help me out as an advisor (I have tried enrolling into an animtion course at my local uni but with no luck) that would be very helpful. Plase reply here, Email me at kevingrfoster1@btinternet.com , contact me on Skype with the name Hotlead J or with MSN messanger with the same email adress (Skype is more preferable).

  Right, first things first, what sort of game is he from (going to be in).  What's his personality? If he hasn't got much of one at the moment you could make one up for him, his likes, dislikes, all these would give you ideas and possiblilities on the best and most interesting movements he could make. That's always a good way to start.  I think you're main problem is you don't actually know what sort of animation you want to give him, so hopefully planning out his past and stuff could help you a lot with the ideas :).

  Once you've done that I'm sure you'll have an idea for his idle animation (it is his idle one right?)  Is this character for a fighting game or a platformer or what?

  The first one looks the best so far imo for a fighter stance, although his head wobbles around like he's listening to heavy rock music which is quite cool actually lol.

  My main problem is knowing what I want to do with the object I want to animate which is what I think is the same with you.  Hopefully what I said helps and when you've done the actually animation we can help you out more with it's actual movements and so on.

P.S, make a rough animation first before you add any details or cleaning up, just so you can see it's actual movements, then later add in the next most important things, then the next and so on till the least important, like the small markings on the uniform, bouncing of hair and stuff, etc.