love it. im a huge fan of the mini sprite style. this is gold. lol. i shout steal! when im trying to be sneaky too!

 Honestly, I don't think he should be saying it, like in an RPG where the words just pop up above what's happening rather than someone saying it. 

The idea of a thief guy shouting out "STEAL!" like a catch phrase is pretty great actually :)

 You might be right, although my original plan was to work around that with sfx and on-screen effects, such as a quick flash on the character suffering the theft, and the sound of coins hitting the ground, or a cash register going 'ka-ching!', something like that, but improving the animation can only add to it, I guess.

I will be working on making it convey the act of stealing in a more convincing way, thanks for the advice!

Have to say this seems a bit rushed out. At this size I think you really need to exaggerate the personality of your characters to convey their actions. Take away the speech bubble and there's nothing to indicate that your thief is doing anything other than punching someone. Just to throw ideas out there, have you considered making a really exagerrated sneaky walk animation to proceed his fist thrust?