Oliver ~ Standing Still & Blinking IDLE - [2 Frames]

Oliver ~ Walking Left & Right - [2 Frames]

CowboyNPC1 ~ Talking - [2 Frames]

Cactus ~ Dancing - [7 Frames]

The Animation Process/Reflection:

When I started making these animations, I didn't really have an idea of what to make because if I were going to make something, I would like to make it related to the project. After some thought, I was like, okay, why not have a Cowboy theme? I have no idea if this theme is going to stick for the main project, but this is what I came up with for now.

I decided to make two Cowboys: Oliver, the main character you'll be playing as, and a random cowboy NPC. Then, there is also a dancing cactus. 

Cowboys

When making Oliver the cowboy, some difficulties I had were establishing the length of the body, legs, etc. I didn't want one of the other to be too long, too short, or too big because I wanted to add some details to them, for example, adding the extra shading/highlights to the clothing of the cowboy. It was really fun to make the pixel art have a little bit more depth, though, instead of being flat and one color.

For the walking animation, those were a little bit more difficult to do. I struggled for quite some time to adjust to making a sideways view. Everything from the torso up was a little bit easier, but for the legs, I was really struggling to make it look like Oliver was actually walking. I'm sure once I have more frames and time to practice, maybe I'll look better. It does look a little off to me, but it's good for now.

Cactus

Lastly, the Cactus, which was probably the easiest to make out of all the sprites, mainly because the Cactus is an object compared to a moving character that's bigger.

As for the reason why it's moving, no idea, I thought it would just be cool to have a moving dancing cactus. 😛