Composite Views

[Crimson Wizard]

Composite View is a view that is being constructed by combining several standard Views with certain relative XY-offsets and Z-orders. As a result we have a Character or Object (Inventory Item, GUI etc) image that consists of few parts, each having its own current sprite and animation.

This will certainly take some time to implement, but will allow character skins, complex animations for characters and objects, and reduce amount of sprites needed to be drawn.

[Joseph DiPerla]

I believe Lucasarts did this with their games. Would something like this work: http://brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm