Animating pixels is sooo satisfying

At the beginning, I just wanted to see some methods for designing characters and landscapes in pixels, not especially animating them ! But in the pile of sh... marvelous treasure that is Youtube, I stumbled upon the channel of the great Saultoons... And just binged every video on the channel (he's a very fun and accessible artist and I recommend his videos to anyone, btw).

There. I was sold.

I just felt the compelling need to try and animate something ! I bought Aseprite right away, took one of my first pixel characters (this guy below), and let's go !

Damn, that's so cool !!!

What ? Not impressed ? Quite basic ? That's cute.
Yeaaaah, in fact, that "basic" idle animation took me FOREVER ! Something like 4 or 5 hours. For my first pixel animation ever, maybe I didn't take the easiest character to start with... It may not be obvious to you, but a 64x64 pixels canvas is a lot of little colored squares to deal with while animating ! All the asynchronous movements of the different body parts, all the details (yes, details) to consider in order to make it somewhat believable. And that's just an idle pose !

You know what ? I'll just start over ! Do the same, but with less details !

I took one of the characters I know the most (myself) and just (re)drew it in pixels, that time in a 24x24 canvas. No so easy either, though. Removing details to keep only the essential with such a small amount of little squares can also be a pain in the --beeeeeeeeeep-- !
But there I had it. Just expanded the canvas to 48x48, added a little background... Bam ! Done.
Next step ? Animating that idle pose. Again !

Much easier ! And damn satisfying (although not perfect) !

What now ? I'll just keep practicing, of course !
Making characters, landscapes, animating more complex actions. Nostalgia or not, nerdy or not, pixel art is a world filled with great treasures that I intend to explore much further. I have a lot to learn and learning new things is fun !

Speaking of... If there's something I already learned : don't post your own cute caricature on social media.

Now excuse me, I have to finish drawing all my facebook friends in pixels.