I've worked with HTML5 (canvas, webgl) and JavaScript for a while now, so it was very obvious the performance and size benefits of using spine assets. Now, I've just started learning about Unity2D. The animation features are quite powerful, performance is great, etc. on it's own. Using Spine instead of Unity features for composing animations seemingly adds complexity that I'm not sure is good, yet. So, I'm wondering what are the benefits of using spine assets in a Unity 2D project. The first thought is that I might have better programmatic control of spines, but I'm not sure and haven't seen any examples of this.

Would someone with some experience using Spine and Unity2D share their thoughts?
(Just looking for high-level tips from someone whose gone through the workflow and development.)

Nevermind, still walking through the tutorials. I see it's called Image Switching. Nice! Thanks anyway.

Please, excuse my ignorance. I've got about 2 full days experience now with Spine and am not an animator. So, I don't even know the terms yet to search for to see if this has already been addressed.

I need to create an animation of say... a bird flapping it's wings. I've done a setup, have the bones in place and initial wings attached. Then, I switch to animation mode, and well, flap the wings. However, I really need to have alternate images of the wings at different frames to get the best effect rather than just animating static wings up and down.

Is this possible? What should I be searching for to learn more about this?