I'm here in Lausanne, Switzerland working on my new piece. For this, I needed to prepare some sprite-like animations (they'll be textures in the end, rendered in 3D) and I found a sweet little, free app to do just that.

It's called Pixen and can be acquired here:

http://pixenapp.com/

The free download works on 10.6.8 -- there's now a paid version in the App store, but that's for 10.7 and later only. (Don't choose to upgrade to the latest version if you're running 10.6)

Anyway, take a look at the Animation feature - it's really great. Allows you to sequence a bunch of frames (with layers and such), set the duration of each frame, and see them in a preview window. You also have the option of showing the previous frame as an overlay so that you can organize things visually. Then, when you're finished, you export the whole thing to a QuickTime movie. (Seems to output only as PNG movies.)

There's a wee little tutorial on this feature on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkMO84LLE3s

Enjoy,

Mark