I don't think this will be counted in the art challenge if it's only on this forum.

3 ideas

i think during the animation more needs to move than just the legs, the centipede's segments should wiggle.

i also think it would look better with the segments diminishing slightly. like attacched, but probably my quickie edit made them too small.

add some more shading, with 2 more orange variations, to have more of the round lpc look/feel.

good luck.

Definitely agree with Ragnar. The segments need to move in relation to one another A simple approach would be: each frame, move 1 segment 1px forward; that way the total length stays the same but the segments kinda undulate with respect to one another. Some side-to-side movement might be necessary too. 

Not sure how early of a sketch you are considering this, so apologies if this is premature: you should add at least two more shades: a darker outline around the whole thing, and a lighter shade for highlights (just a few px per segment). This will allow you to imply a rounder, shinier shape. Your current darkest shade can then be used for shadows around the back/bottom of each segment. 

Not sure how to help with the turning, that seems like a complicated movement... 

Excited to see how you develop this!

yeah that is much better with the wiggle. the version with more legs is best. i am not well versed in what makes lpc style "official" but it looks like centipede to me!

TBH, I don't think it's good. Centipedes as well as worms and many other animals are using peristaltic movement, which kinda looks like a wave, something that I cannot see here.

I think you should animate one leg, a little up-down movement with different angles, then copy that multiple times, but with a phase delay: so for example the first leg on the left starts at frame 1, the second leg at frame 2, third leg frame 3 etc. Considering the leg is moving up-down, this will result in different sized gaps between the legs, and as the animation rolls, that gap will seemingly move, giving that wave-like feeling to it. On the right, do exactly the same, just add the number of frames / 2, so first leg on the right starts at frame numframe/2, second leg at numframe/2 + 1, third leg numframe/2 + 2 etc.

This is the best image I could find to explain what I mean:

Hope this helps,
bzt

Good improvements, a few more suggestions:

- Leg movement still doesn't really make sense to me. Each leg kind of wiggles back and forth, then doesn't move for a frame. How am I supposed to understand that this creature is moving? I think bzt's suggestion is actually pretty good. I would suggest animating one leg at a time: have the leg lift up, move forward, land, then move backward as the creature is propelled forward. You can do this in 4 frames. Then copy that for the other legs, each slightly out of phase with one another. If it helps, just animate one segment and get that looking good, then you can copy-paste to the others. You can check out Redshrike's spider for some inspiration https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-spider . Obviously you don't need to be as detailed. as him, but you might get some ideas from how he animated the legs. 

- Outline should be much darker for LPC style. Consider how this will look on a background---without a strong outline, it will totally blend together.  You want something like #43181c or #27232a or #2b1c1d for the outline. I would suggest making the shadow color darker too. Having several very similar shades is good for things you want to kind of blend together in the background---like the dirt in the LPC base assets. This is the opposite---a giant monster that should look three-dimensional and really pop out! So turn up the contrast. Consider also adding a drop shadow eventually. You can do this in a few ways, one cheap way is to copy the shape to another layer, replace all colors with #2f202599 (#2f2025 w/ 60% opacity), and shift a few px to the right and down. I've attached an example where I just did those two things and IMO it looks a lot better. 

- In general, use shading to imply 3D shape. Think about what parts of the object would be hit with the light source, and which parts should be dark. That will help you avoid the dreaded "pillow shading" (there's a little bit of that going on here). If it helps, think about each segment as a simple shape, like a sphere, and try to shade it like that. You can grab a real object like an orange and look at how light bounces off it, or google "sphere shading." I know this is kind a "draw the rest of the owl" comment, because getting shading right is a lot of the work for making any good visual art, but constantly reminding yourself to think about the light source and try to draw in 3 dimensions is an extremely important and useful forcing function. I tried very lightly re-shading the first frame, to give an idea how you might add a little more depth. (My edits CC0, feel free to use however). 

Keep up the good work!

Wow you picked a real tricky creature to draw, but it's looking great! If you want to animate a turn, it should behave like a slinky. The head turns and the back end disappears slightly. Then as more sections appear side on, more back parts disappear until it's caught up with itself...that's how I'd try and do it at least. No promises it'll be any good though lol

@FiveBrosStopMosYT: I think the way I put it might have sounded complicated, but actually it is not, it's pretty easy to do.

Here's an example. It has 4 frames, played forth-and-back, that's 6 frames in total. On the left you can see that original 4 frames. On the right I have copied this animation multiple times, one for each leg. The one and only trick I did is, that I've started each leg animation at the next frame, which automatically creates this wave effect.

Cheers,
bzt

Wow, looks much much better, well done!

There's a little bug (pun :-)) I believe you have accidentally put the same frame twice on the right side, which makes it look like the legs stop for a moment. I haven't noticed this on the left side, just on the right.

Otherwise this is already good, but you might want to consider playing the animation forth-and-back instead of a loop, that would make it smoother (no need to draw new frames, just use them as frame 1,2,3,4,3,2 then repeat). This is noticeable on the top left legs. But this is a small thing, if you fix the right side it is already looking pretty good IMHO. Good job!

Cheers,
bzt

Looks pretty good, but perspective is not quite right for the side view. You are drawing the character side-on, but you should see the top of the creature too, at about a 1:2 ratio (so if the creature is as wide as he is tall, and you draw the side of the creature 20 px tall, you should draw the top ~10px tall). 

D'oh! I didn't see this discussion until just now. 

Improvements look good. The north and south centepede sprites have 4 segments, but the east & west sprites appear to have twice that many at half the width. Centepedes have 1 pair of legs per segment, which is 6 in this case. I don't know if it's worth putting in the kind of effort i'm suggesting for "realism", I just know it is something that raised my eyebrow when I saw this sprite.

I also feel like the horizontal should be slightly longer than the vertical ones since the perspective is kind of implying the vertical ones are "squished" along the vertical axis. EDIT: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Ignore me. @bluecarrot: What is the typical artistic convention for that? Does different sprite width and height cause more disturbance to the player than not adjusting for perspective angle? 

As bluecarrot suggested, the horizontal sprites should have some overhead components visible. I know that was accounted for already, but I feel they need even more overhead tilt. The legs "behind" (north side) the cetepede should almost be visibly peaking over the "top" (north side) of the sprite IMO. I'm still looking from a mostly overhead perspective at the centepede. 75% overhead, to be exact, though I don't think 3/4ths overhead adheres to the ratio quite that strictly for LPC. Much of it is more like 2/3rds overhead sometimes.

include both in the same submission. People will be able to see both versions in one place and choose the one they prefer easier.

Depends on how drastic. If it looks totally different, I would repost it and call it a different centipede. If you just change angles, I would leave the old and/or new in the same post.

Oh... hey Medicine Storm!

Looks great; what a neat concept!

You may want to read about banding and band compression; that would help the turtle's shell look more natural. Here is an extremely quick and overly aggressive demonstration. You can fill that open space with a pattern for better results. 

Also the saddle was done by BenCreating! https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-horse-extended

i think leg movement needs to be more dynamic. the legs just slide forward. a turtle kind of pulls itself forward.