A sprite is an image of a person or whatever and multiple images of them come together at different frames to make a short animations, thats how my effects work, I use sprite sheets, trace them and than they appear to move when you play them frame by frame. An example of a sprite: https://rubikstube.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/mario-8-bitdiagram.jpg?w=545 this is a mario running sprite sheet.