Jappio's RPG Sprites

[Rosencrantz]

The magical thing is you gotta think about the ~physics~ of this kind of stuff. Mass, in general, doesn't like any sort of change when it comes to motion; it'll basically either refuse to move anywhere, or it'll never want to stop moving.

SO
let's pick apart the animation:

That axe looks heavy. Like, really heavy. So when he lifts it over his shoulder, it's going to try and keep going into his back. So maybe add in an additional frame where the axe moves back by another pixel or two.

In that same animation, you're doing something pretty nice: you're making him rotate his body to go along with the inertia of the axe. The front foot shouldn't really be static during this transition; at the very least, the ankle wants to twist too in order to give the full body rotation it wants. And since you're rotating the pelvis, the upper leg should retract backward to stay connected to the joint. Try making the kneecap bend inward so that the leg becomes straighter towards the end of the backswing; do this in such a way that the upper leg stays in its hip socket~

Now, the actual swing: you've brought the axe to a complete halt, which means it wants to say "haha screw you I'm done moving". You should add in an additional frame here to model this point in the animation. Basically, you want to have him starting to sling the axe forward; have the axe shift a pixel (inertial resistance) and have the guy beginning to move into the swing pose.
(Here's a little secret: even though that handle is supposed to be rigid, truth is that material you don't want snapping in half likes to bend. So you can have the arms pushing the pole into the start of a swing, but then have the end of the pole bend down to attach back to the axe head, which remains rigid and unrotated in the inertia position. Like a very slight j. Just, you know, without a very curvy tail bit).

Now we get into the axetual swing bit. Again, the full-body rotation is great; the back foot's gonna rotate, but the back foot also wants to stay in place. If you want a good swing, you gotta put your own force into it, and moving forward while swinging is the best way to do this! But you gotta stop yourself while doing this big swing, otherwise you send your axe flying behind you (physics) and you go slamming into the dirt. So that front foot's got a job to do: it has to come slamming down into the dirt so you don't lose your teeth. Not to mention it needs to move forward anyway otherwise the twist becomes a tad awkward.

During the swing blur, couple of things: first, the blade blur doesn't stop at the back of the axe; the front of the axe head is also moving very fast and should also be a part of that blur effect. Second, remember your bogus physics lectures: that axe has stopped during the blur animation, but it won't be at rest at a position after the blur. Rather, it should be in its final position just a bit <before> where the blur stops.






ALTERNATIVELY, you could forego the one-two footsteps and just have him lean back. I toyed with the animation myself; it's a really rough 10-minute cut so I didn't toy around with body features, but I think it's a nice representation of the wind-up then swing I was going on about: