wilgotwall When creating with the ESS version, I recommend incorporating some frame-by-frame animation. For example, the Dragon example below was made using the ESS version, but its wing movements were animated traditionally, frame by frame, resulting in a rich and dynamic appearance:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-examples-dragon
That said, drawing each frame of complex motion, such as flapping wings, takes both time and technical skill. Therefore, I suggest preparing several pre-deformed images using free image editing software like GIMP.
In GIMP, you can use the Cage Tool to deform images. Spine PRO offers a similar feature through meshes. However, if you create and use pre-deformed images in advance with GIMP, you can achieve nearly the same visual results as with Spine’s mesh system.
Although this approach increases the number of images and can lead to larger texture sizes, understanding Spine’s mesh and weight settings can be challenging at first. For that reason, creating deformed images in an external editor like GIMP can sometimes be an easier starting point for beginners.
