Castle Woodwarf

After a few weeks off, I am back with a concept for an upgrading game.

I was animating dwarf walking and it turned out more like hopping.
I like it, so it stays 

ha, that looks pretty funny. I could see a speech bubble above that character: "haters gonna hate" lol.

You seem to be pretty good at graphic design. I thought earthlings was a bit too many styles thrown together, pixel art might be a good way to "frame" everything. I'm looking forward on your progress!

That animation is sweet!  So you do all your own art?

Thanks! Yes, it is all my work. (Except for some stuff in Earthlings I got from OpenGameArt.org !)
I love digital painting but each illustration and animation takes me a lot of time because I am not skilled enough yet.
Good point, Earthlings do not have fixed style whatsoever. Definitely will use just pixel art in this new game. But I am not sure will I stick with it in the future...
Here is the improved GIF with a better axe I did after a Twitter feedback.

Wood cutting animation is finished! With lost of help on pixelart and animation from Mr. Pedro Medeiros' tutorials
https://www.patreon.com/saint11

Really cool.  I love this kind of pixel style

Just some small feedback.

The 'wood cutting' animation doesn't look right to me.
Firstly, the head motion usually would be opposite of the axe direction when it goes down.
When you hack/chop something with a force, your body(along with your head) will automatically
pushed slightly to the back to stabilize your whole body from stumbling down.
Secondly, the axe swing is too small, even though you add the curve motion trail.
Currently it looks more like chipping a stick instead of chopping wood/log/tree.
It should have a larger swing.
At least the axe need to be behind his shoulder for the first frame. Not just the curve trail.

Here's what helps me whenever I do animations.
Try performing it in real life first.
Doing it in front of a mirror helps too.
Just pretend that you are holding a real axe. Imagine you are chopping a log/tree.
This way it'll make it much easier for you to imagine it while doing the animation.

Me too, I love this pixel style because it looks nice and clean!

As for the chopping - valid observations, thanks for the feedback!
I think maybe I might improve it in the polishing phase. Although I usually don't redo stuff it takes too much time. For instance, I improved the looks of the axe because it is a small correction. But for bigger points, if they are decent enough, I often keep them as they are. I try to focus on completing the game and in the next project I use experience gained.

This looks fun! yeah i love of clean the art style is.

For a while now I did not make updates to this journal, but I tweeted more instead.
All in all, this moment I managed to publish a beta version and hopefully game launch is in July.
I teamed up with a musician to create a tune and sound effects. He even did some cool voicing. Two of the songs will be royalty free ones downloaded from the net and credited properly.
As of recently, an artist joined as well to create the game title and game over screens.

Since the game is all about slowly developing and revealing, I think public beta would be a bad idea. So please if anyone is interested in testing, reach me by inbox or Twitter.

Thanks!!

I love it haha.. man. So much detail in such few colors.  What platforms are you making it for?

Thank you! Well, I think only Flash by now. But, if it turns out to be a very good game, I can always try PC and both mobile platforms.
Resolution is 960x640 so it should be decent fit  for many screen sizes.
My goal is to improve pixel art and animation skills while hopefully earning some small income.  I am targeting Kong monthly prize, flash ads revenue and perhaps even sponsorship.

A few months ago I discovered Piskel.
It is an excellent free sprite creator, there are both online and desktop apps.

My animation workflow got much faster since using it, so I decided to correct the chopping a bit like iii suggested.

I tried it out but to be honest I didn't really know what to do :-(