The pixel animation of the Max character was more time consuming than the sheep as it was essentially hand drawn animation.  Early tests with rigging this character failed to provide the retro video game look, so I decided to go with drawing the character in Adobe Animation (Flash) using the Pixel Tools v2.0 plug in.

This meant doing a rough pass of animation (sometimes the animatic poses were good enough), then drawing a cleaned-up outline. Then filling this outline with colour then adding another pass of tones (shadows) and yet another pass of highlights. This was necessary to achieve the video game aesthetic.  Fortunately Max was not animated in a smooth style and moved on an average of about 1 new drawing every 10 frames.