Digital acting 1 - "The Axe and the Wolf"

Recently I have been learning more and more about what key poses are, what makes them relevant in the animation process and why do they are key poses. By looking into a short gif image of a little wolf swinging an axe, I was asked to identify the key poses of this small animation.

In my understanding there are three key aspects that point out the sequence of the actions. When the wolf is swinging the axe as if he would be hitting a moving target, since he is facing left with the axe in the air, then turns right and swings the axe down and hits the ground, and then a more subblte one, when the wolf removes the axe from the ground and does a small movement as if he was loosening the axe from the ground to pull it up and have it ready to swing again.

I deconstructed the animation into frames so that I can better observe the key aspects of the movement:

 

For me these would be the key poses. For the swing movement there is one frame where the wolf is holding the axe over his head in the maximum streched position, his body following the movement flow. The next key frame is when the swing movement is done and the axe hits the ground. When the axe hits the ground there is a reaction to the impact and the wolf makes a sublte jump, to simulate the strength of the impact. Here I find two other key frames, the highest and the lowest point of the jump. After this, the wolf removes the axe from the ground but there is a frame that strengthens the idea of the weigth of the axe: a small up and down movement with his upper body emphasised by a full strech of both arms. The final key frames are when the wolf positions the axe above his head, followed by a change of direction and a jump.

I think the selection I made is correct because from these frames mentioned above I can see the extreme positions of the movement the wolf and the axe have. These frames allow me to dettermine the main movement aspects, aswell as the small emphasis movements that the wolf does to transmit the idea of weight of the axe.

The following frames are not in the correct logical order since the first frame is not the extreme point of the swing movement and it should start when the wolf is in the oposite direction to the swing movement. However, in relation to the gif image they are exactly correct, because the Gif starts in a swing frame.