I started off with this blockout, but realised that since the player would be running endlessly, the block would need much more forward force- the character should not lean backwards. Instead, I started thinking about the character putting their full weight behind the shield and thrusting forward to keep the forward momentum needed for our rhythmic runner game. Also, since the button could be held on longer 'notes', I talked to my team about how to go about the animations. We decided it would be best if the main aspect of the animation was a looping block animation that could be held, which we could then add smear frames at the start and end to which would be triggered when the button is pressed/released.

I started to sketch a new pose for the block.

And pixelled it, creating a new sprite with subtle movement with the hair, tabard and scarf to hint at the forward propulsion.

Next came the attack animations. I had decided with my team that each attack should be four frames long, and that there should be three attack animations total; these should be able to play individually or as a long string of attacks.  

We struggled to conceptualise these attacks in quick succession, and so the only option was clearly to try and do them with whatever we had on hand (a ribena bottle.)

This proved almost completely useless, but with the generous donation of a plastic sword the next day, we finally managed to think up a rough attack sequence that would keep the forward momentum going.

I started the /actual/ animation work by sketching out the basic frames.

I then cleaned them up, 

This allowed me to run the first two sword animations back-to-back in order to see the movement. This process was quite a lot of trial and error of pixelling then creating a gif to run all the frames one after another and then changing parts that didn't look so good. I left the addition of the scarf until last so that I could focus on the body movement first.

During this week, the five of us in our group also discussed what we were planning to do after graduation, where we'd like to be, and what kind of environment we would like to work in. The five of us agreed that we'd like to continue working together in the future and ideally stay in Norwich, so in this week we started to email Mark and staff at the Ideas Factory about potentially setting up our own indie company after graduation.