Haha! Yeah, this is a bit like doing IT or teaching, but everyone is a whole lot nicer. ;)
On animating:
If you are using the "split" art method (which is just a version of the "paper doll" method), you wouldn't generally change the art color during animations. Like, when you walk across the room, your clothes don't change color. And since setting modulate/self-modulate sets it for the node, if you are using an "animated sprite" node, all images in that animation would be colored the same.
Like, if you had a fully-colored animated baby character, you might have separate art for the face, hair, mouth eye whites, irises, pupils, arms, legs, shirt, and diaper. Each of these would be their own sprite node with their own color and you then can use an "animation player" to move each piece separately.
Does that all make sense? If not, I can try to make some images to show what I mean.
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I'm glad to hear that we are nicer than your average IT customer!
I think I understand visually what it would look like a bit better, but to me it seems tedious to have to switch the animations for all of the different pieces, which makes me think I'm missing something.
Like for instance if I want to switch from "idle" to "run" animation, I would have to tell the hair, the face, the iris, etc to switch their animations to "run".
Also how would you split each frame, is that done in engine or do you have to do it in a sprite editing program?
Would you mind telling me the official name for this method so I can try and find some documentation for it? I looked up paper doll method but it seems to be mainly referencing skeleton animation which seems different
There are different terms, but sometimes it is called a "cutout animation".
Here is a video tutorial: (www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMFuEc1XsOQ)