I've come to a block and it's drivin' me mad.
I'm tryin' to animate my sprites in the same/similar fashion that FFVI did, where they change graphic from their basic walking sprite to a finger-wag or laugh or knocked down [et cetera] and continue doing so through messages and such until a certain point where they change back.
I can get the animation to change fine, but it freezes up upon any message and won't continue to roll through the frames (which is an issue for ones like laughing, where they sit on a frozen frame jus' in the middle of a laugh, rather than switching between frames).

Any insights?

Are you using 2k or 2k3?

I haven't tried doing this but I'd like to see if I could help figure it out for you, knowing which rm to use would help.

2k3.
I think I've figured out a way;  Not the best, but it suffices.



I made this charsheet with the main sprite and all the poses that I think I'm likely to be using, and as/when needed I change the sprite assosciations to the wanted pose (assuming they're not moving, they can face any direction and it will apply (except for the kneeling down one at the top right, which is split into the two directions)).
For the moving ones (laugh and finger-wag) I just set a move event rotation and tell it to turn 90 degrees, wait and turn 90 degrees again and set on repeat, while having the neccesary messages afterwards set to allow events to continue.

Only problem with this is that I have to code the same events for all heroes for the hero to do it, in case the player switches the hero order around.

x.x

To get around your multiple order party issue, try creating a common event. If you have the 'Order' option from the default menu available, this won't work.

If you've made a custom ordering/party management system, have a variable set to the value of the front hero when they get set. Then in the common event just have conditional branches check what the variable is, and in each have the animation the same, but the charset different. (Or if you have some characters in the same set, change the position and so on. I think you know how to get around that.) You could go more complex and have an expression variable too, saving you from having to make a common event for each expression, combining it all into one.

Do note also this'll only work for the 'Hero' instance. If you're using events in cutscenes, you'll want to create variables or switches for each character's event, and have the events have multiple pages. On each page set the animation and conditions to the variables and sprites you want. Make sure each event uses its OWN switches or variables, or you'll have two characters animating when only one should.

Is this clear?