Note; I'm giving a wall of text here cause I don't know if I'm using the right line of thinking for the result I'm looking for. So I listed out the end goal I want, then the process I was thinking of to get there. Cause I'm not experienced in game making, I may be going about this the wrong way. So maybe someone who knows better can point that out.

So I'm attempting to make sprites for a video game, but I'm having issues with the work-load. The problem being that, due to the set-up, I would need to make a rather large sprite set for the player alone. They would need a sprite set of 8 images for walking, running, idle, light attack, ect. And in all four cardinal directions. Last I totaled the sprite number, it was around 500 images, assuming I used 8 images for each animation. I wanted to have a number of different armors for the player, so making 500 images a number of times is unacceptable.

I came upon the idea to, at least for the east and west animations, make a cut-up of the character. Hands, fore-arms, back arms, torso, pelvis, thighs, shins, feet and head. Then duplicate the parts, rotate and move them to make the second frame. Repeating this to make the next layer and so on. It would stop me from having to re-draw every sprite and also prevent me from warping the sprite by not drawing it correctly (elongate limbs or warp armor.).

This was still taking too long, till another idea came to me. Now I'm thinking, is there a program, where I can make an image and set of instructions, and the program will follow them. An example being, draw the thigh, then find the rotations and movements for of that thigh needed to make each frame of the animation. Then enter that into the program, and the program will proceed to make the 8 layers with the proper movement and rotations.

Using that, I'd not only be able to streamline the process of making the animation, but I'd also be able to copy paste those instructions to each of the other armors.

I'd still have the issue of the north and south animations, but I really don't know what to do about that than to just redraw the sprites for each frame.

PS. On an added note, I did look up programs like Spine, but ended up deciding against it cause of 1) I didn't think I could make the north and south animations with it 2) It cost money to use the program (Might end up having to spend money, but wanted to avoid it the best I can) 3) I don't know if I could use the spine animations for east and west, then tell the game making program I'm using to toss that aside when I go to use north and south sprites.

Also the game making program I'm using is Game Maker Studio