So you mean the spriter would still have to draw all the body parts, but just not put them together for each sprite?
In terms of rotation I can see auotmated rotation about the z-axis (e.g. drawing the hands on a clock and having these automatically rotated) but I can't see how it would be possible to automate rotation about the other axes (think Ryu's spinng kick move from SF2 - I don't think there's any way of automatically animating something like this). Ash, are you saying something like that is possible? I'm not familiar with the animation techniques used in those games you mentioned (great graphics though).
It uses inverse kinematics to make the pieces link together. This is available in some flash add ons and any decent 3D software also uses this. Odinsphere goes one extra mile and actually deforms the texture with stretching.etc to create cheap animation. That's how they are fitting so many 32b images on the screen at one time -- because there is very few frames actually being animated.
Some fighting games use this system. The problem is basically you need a really good editor and a really good artist to make it look good.
The artist would basically try their hardest to recreate/simplify every animation that is possible using IK and subbing frames. On the plus side they would have all of these different frames deforming so it looks more smooth - ie the torso scaling to look like breathing.
For some animations it would be cheaper to just do an entire frame so it's something of a hybrid system.
This basically means a lot more work not less if you want it to look like something other than rock'em sock'em robots. The main advantage is for memory purposes.
Some people call this 'puppet animation'. It's basically layers and like using multiple meshes compared to a single mesh in 3D animation there are benefits and problems.
