Ways of going about Animations

[bachrock]

I've been scouring the internet for information regarding creating animations to be used in a game. This has been a bit difficult as my experience is with graphics (Photoshop and to some extent Flash) and not programming (just some Matlab). I intend on creating all the graphics and having someone else do the programming.

I've read of creating one image for a particular animation that contains multiple frames with colored bars in between. I've also heard of using flash animations.

I'm wondering if someone would be so kind as to help me out with understanding the various ways of going about this. What other methods are there? Which would you recommend?

Thanks!