Crane Fighting Style
I’ve been looking into this fighting style for a reason, I know very little about it. Since my next battler I’m making uses it I needed to know certain things, it’s always important to know what you’re doing before you try to sprite it. The idle pose is the most obvious as it’s right there, but how do they defend? What is that styles primary attack? Those are just a couple of questions a person who makes things animate needs to ask themselves.
Try to look up videos on the style itself, not just someone practising but also combat videos. These may even be from games where a certain character uses that style.
From what I’ve gathered by doing a days studying (Hey c’mon it’s new years day) is that a lunge forward – whilst lowering the right leg- then the left hand flows forward into a strike. Taking note that the other hand does a circular motion – seemingly to push away a targets block.
If it helps try to sketch out a few drawings to help with balance, start and end stances.
When you come to actually animate the character don’t make it picture perfect first time, why? Well you’re not going to know if it works until you’ve seen it in motion. Additionally with this sheet there’s only 4 frames to play with, 2 of those being the move to impact and the impact.
Now this is a first draft of the attack pose, I’m not worried about what the body is doing at this point as the main focus is on getting that leg to the ground and keeping the actors balance. The red circle is the attacking hand, it’s within 16 pixels of the impact zone (the first 32 pixel zone) so the lunge isn’t going to be that far.
Now if I find that I need an additional frame at the end, after the impact pose then I’ve not wasted any time. Making sure that frames can be removed and the actor still appears to be moving into position (it may look a bit faster) is a big relief knowing that there’s flexibility to work with. Here’s how it looks with just the Idle pose and the first Attack frame:
I think that works really well, if anything it shows that this character is really fast. The only alterations which may be needed is on the hand that’ll push away the targets block, it might need to be animated in earlier and not start so close to the body.
A Fencer not a Fighter
Anyway there’s not been a whole load happening, I’ve been able to complete the idle pose of Fighter 002 from XP:
Though I see her more of a fencer and since XP doesn’t really separate that sort of class I’ll be categorising her as a fencer.
I’ve also noticed that there’s been quite a few people checking out the Scripts sections, I know I’ve not been able to update those as much as I would’ve liked. I’m hoping in the future to have a few example videos up for each script, so if you have or know of any please let me know 
~Stay safe
Both sprites look great! As far as I’m concerned, I love characters with martial arts battling style, maybe because they give me the feeling I’m fighting in a smart way, he he. Anyways, it makes a change from the more traditional combat stances which have been seen time and again in countless games before. I’ve been searching a lot for such original poses and have had no luck so far, and you seem like the most promising spriter to make them (if you plan on making some samurai or otherwise oriental swordsman in the future I’ll be the first to use it). Anyways I love your sense of aesthetics, your sprites really have a spirit to themselves, they feel so alive! I especially like how you can give females some grace and beauty, instead of merely making blokes with long hair and bumpy chests, my favorite so far is Elicia, the female lancer. So keep up the good work!