I don't think it has been discussed much before (Though her victory poses and taunts have I'm pretty sure), but I think most are pretty obvious choices:
- Sleeping would have her curled up like her Jammies mode where she sleeps on the cloud.
- Shield break/dizzy could have her in her 'low health' state but with a more dizzying look in her face and rocking a bit back and forth.
- Victory animations/poses would probably be her doing a dance then end in the level complete pose from HGH. Perhaps one with her dancing with the lamp from Pirate's curse. Or maybe one with a dance ending with a transformation of some kind (most likely Monkey form jumping towards the camera like the Seven Sirens opening animation). Honestly quite a few options here. There's also the flame on her finger thing (Risky's Revenge artwork) that'd make a great splash screen or even her original game's cover pose.
- Her swimming animation is pretty distinct in her games too, so I'm sure they'll be able to adopt that pretty well.
Here's some other possible animations too:
- For her taunts it would be great to have different dances for each direction that you can chain together as much as you want, Other people suggested this and I really like that idea.
- I really hope that she'd be able to crawl and actually have the squeaky noise to go with it. Obviously her cat-like ready-to-pounce wiggle may not be missed either.
- Her ledge hanging poses would hopefully be how she hangs on rings in HGH (Knees out wide, feet together).
- Another cute reference would be to have her do those panicked steps of the Run Run Rottytops section for when she carries boxes or barrels.
- Her 'death' animation for Stamina mode could be her explosion-like death (Fading to black and light beams coming off of her).
- Getting knocked off top-screen and getting the frontside 'death' would be the perfect opportunity to have her smash in to the screen like her Might Switch Force mode. Extra points if the screen actually cracks!
- Tripping could have her sit on the ground, pinching one eye closed as she rubs her bottom in pain (I couldn't remember what game it was from, perhaps it was concept art).
- Idle animation could be her adjusting her golden hair-brace thing and her adjusting her top or maybe stretching like she does in some of her dialogue portraits.
Shantae has so many great animations that really make the character, Sakurai would be spoiled for choice! I'm sure Shantae would have the most energetic animations in her kit as well, just as much as Banjo's have a ton of character.
I'd wonder if they'd make Shantae's ponytail a bit physics based and free-flowing (In most cases when the hair is 'not in use'), or simply animate it along with the rest of her animations. I'd love to see it flow freely, but that might be tricky. There's ways of having it flow like that without getting tangled up ofcourse and I think it'd be really worth it in her case.
Despite me not being super hyped for Banjo, I ended up really loving him and watching his presentation several times. I loved his animations just that much and I'm sure with the magic Smash touch it's going to be twelve-fold for Shantae for me!
