A character reads as alive long before players notice the art style. It happens in the two or three frames where the character reacts to something.
Timing before polish
Our animators block everything in grey boxes first. If a jump does not feel good as a floating cube, no amount of squash and stretch will save it later. Only once the timing is right does the rig get its final pass.
The pause is the performance
The frames we argue about most are the ones where nothing moves. A held pose before a reaction is what turns a sprite into someone who just made a decision — and a single frame either way changes whether a character reads as confident or nervous.
It is a slow way to work, and it is the reason our characters feel like they are thinking.
