Graphics Attack animations and small sprites

What is the best way to go about making a small sprite and animating it with a long weapon ?
I was thinking 64x64 or 100x100 in size

 

I've seen small sprites doing good attack animations. It is up to the artist's skill to convey movement with a small amount of pixels. I'd say first select a consistent size to your characters and enemies and build around that. Sprite animation tools should let you easily enargen the canvas if you run into problems with space.

 

64 or a 100 is large enough to get good animations. Skill more important than size

 

I'd recommend 32 x 32 if this is your first rodeo. If you're going for HD, vector art, or digital painting, you might want to do 64 x 64+

 

Try using 32x32 for the character's idle sprite and swapping to something like 64x32 for the attack and just making sure the sprite origin remains in the same place

 

You could use image_angle to rotate sprites, this lets you make really smooth attack animations without having to worry about the optimal sprite size... just make the weapon and character different sprites and move the weapon sprite around to simulate sword swings, stabs etc.

 

I did try that once inspired by the sword swipes from top down Zelda but I couldn't get the angles to look right