thats the idea after all.

Ah, I see what you mean

I usually just sprite in pieces, and animate that way, but using a 'skeleton' would probably help not only plan out the animations, but perhaps even save me some time...

I'll try to work on this for future animations, thanks for the criticism, it helped a lot

main problem is basically that the whole shape of the sword changes so dramatically from frame to frame, and thats not clear where the handle spins or just goes left right the main issue. for this effect to be accomplished, you need either a fair amount of frames or a well planned and calculated movement of the object in the action, othwewise it would look as jumping from place to place making the spin, in this case, unreadable. i'd rather make a small, simple line spin and upon it, when the whole "spine" of the object is done, full with the rest of the body and then shading/color. pretty much like making a wireframe for a character.