Captain Kid, Princess, the dragon, and all your of the 8-bit characters are animated in what I described as a 'somewhat refined step mode,' style of animation. Basically, I tried to take the looks and feeling of animated 8-bit characters from old games and apply them to 3D. This style was a bit of a hard sell for a character animation department: I had to show enough complexity to qualify as 'character animation' while also keep it simple enough that it could look like bit art.
So if you look at Mario in Super Mario Bros. for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), he has about a 3ish frame run cycle. It's short, it's pretty basic, but it also works. I found that with my characters in 3D, 3 poses was not quite enough to sell a run cycle. There were just enough frames between poses that the character would still look a little dead. So I added a breakdown or two for each of the main poses, to help indicate each part of a run (contact, passing, stretch, etc) with a little more clarity. 'Step mode' in animation refers to how tangents work in an animation graph editor. Basically a pose is held until the next keyframe, then the character instant jumps to the next pose. This is usually used when starting a shot for animation, but I found it useful for selling the effect I wanted with these characters.
I found an animation look that evokes more closely to the 16-bit era of games, but I think it works nicely for the short. Hopefully fellow game enthusiasts who played a lot of the old games I'm paying homage to will feel the same.
Here is a test I did to get some more practice working in this style:
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