Yea I apologize I didn't know what I was talking about there. Thank you for clarifying that. And thank you for the rest of your feedback as well, Skullmageddon.
No need to apologize, and no problem dude. Just let me know if I'm ever talking too much or providing feedback when you really don't want any. I don't mind critiquing, but I'd also hate to come across as patronizing.
Okay so I made sure to follow what you said and experiment with what I had already as well. I made it look like the pulling back swing almost looks like a pelvic thrust forward and downward to become a thrust downward going upward and backward. I also used the traced concept as the last frame. I may want to work backward from that when I do the final line art. As for the full animation I think it may make more sense to look at.
Nice! Ok, this is looking much better. Of the three animations you posted, the second one is the most successful. The poses and their positioning convey just enough information for me to understand what's happening. It's better than the first version and here's why;
Quite frankly, the traced illustration of Alex's concept is simply better than your original frame. I usually don't like to skirt around the bush, so I'll just go ahead and tell you that your character illustrations aren't very good. Obviously I don't mean that in a harsh or mean way, but it's something that's pretty damn important when it comes to character animation. The reason I haven't brought it up until now is because there's not much I can do about it. From what I understand you don't have a whole lot of experience with 2D animation or illustration, and getting better at illustrating is just something that happens as you continue to illustrate over a long period of time. I can critique the quality of your illustrations and provide some pointers and feedback if you'd like, but for now it's just easier to provide feedback on your work as an animation. So yeah, version 2 is better that version 1 because Alex is better at drawing than you are :P But no seriously, if you'd like to talk about illustrating separately from animating then let me know and I'll see if I can provide helpful feedback.
Ok, so here's why version 2 is better than version 3;
The third version emphasizes the wrong parts of the action. The actual swing should be really fast and could be summed up with, at most, a single frame inbetween. There are a number of ways you could go about doing it, but at the moment the third version makes the swing feel really slow because there are so many frames between the two key frames. Instead, emphasize the frames leading
into the back swing, then emphasize the
follow-through that happens after the swing. If you'd like, I could animate my own version of the move to explain the motions I'm talking about. I probably wouldn't get around to doing so until tomorrow night or the next, but it's often much easier to explain by simply showing rather than telling.
I was also wondering about that. I think the action before and the action afterward makes sense but as I try to execute the same movement in real life, I tend to pull back a tiny bit after the supposed swipe to maintain balance. I haven't incorporated it yet but would that make sense to animate that as well? (I wish I had a better understanding of this kind of motion)
Acting out a motion is a really good way to go about animating something. The problem in this case is that you have to keep in mind that this is an extremely unrealistic action that obviously can't be fully acted out. Aside from realistic notions of movement and physics, you also have to consider details about the character that you want to convey. Also, the animation simply has to look good. Animating something that looks
right doesn't always mean that you animate in a way that is
actually right. If you're unsure as to whether or not having her pull back at all during the follow-through would look good, then I would suggest you try animating it that way and see how you feel about it. I often find that attempting to animate something in a particular way is the best way to decide if it's appropriate or not.
- Red shift - Vanishing spin works like parasoul's 
- Orbital hell - Overhead kick, evades lows.
- Black Hold - works like painwheels command grabs. 
