This is a question for people who know alot about animation or who have made games using sprite animation. What is the recommended number of frames for each different animation that the character does? I know some will take more than others like combo attacks, etc but overall for example lets say just walking, how many frames are recommended for something as simple as that?

Answer: "It depends"

Explanation: The more frames of animation you have, the smoother it will appear. I generally use about 8 animation frames for walking. But I have some art packs created by others with 8-17 animation frames and let me tell you, the ones with around 17 animation frames look really good.

If you are making a fighter game, look at how many Street Fighter does. A platformer game, look at Mario. However, there is also a point where we get wasteful. Although commercial developers can afford to be wasteful at times, we ourselves might do best not making it too extravagant. 5 frames might do for a quick kick by a fighting character.

Although, I had a game once where each sprite (made by another artist) had about 12 animation frames, and was complimented by people on the animation of the game.

Are you drawing the sprites yourself? If you plan to implement many different characters/walking animations then I find that 6 is a good number of frames for walking animation. It's a good tradeoff between 4, which kind of works but looks quite outdated and cheap and 8 which looks decent/fluid as you would expect it some cartoons. In comparison to 8, 6 cuts down production time by 25% and still seems quite decent.

Check this out for comparing 2, 4 and 8: http://www.manningkrull.com/pixel-art/walking.php and here's one that uses 6 frames: http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090908010203/capcomdatabase/images/1/19/BIVNinaWalk.gif

In most 2D fighting games, the number of frames is low. The only exception is on-land movement. Other things like kicking, punching, jumping, on-air movement have at most 3 frames. Some even go as low as no animations at all. Case in example: The M.U.G.E.N. engine, and the classic Street Fighter.