I've written a simple way to animate 2D sprites in Unity, that should be far simpler to setup than the built in Animator, which was designed mainly for character Animation, and waste time with it's complexity sometimes.

The Simple Animator

Add these 2 scripts to your project.

SimpleAnimator.cs

AnimationClipData.cs

Create the animation clips

1. Right Click in your project window and Create AnimationClip to make new animations.

2. Drag and drop all the frames you need into the Sprite Array.

3. Set the frame rate.

4. Setup other options

   Transition Frame: You can set a frame that is the only one from which the that animation can end on.

   Play Once: If check to yes, the animation will play once, and then go back to the previous animation that was playing, or whatever else is being set on the animator.

   Play Once Then This: You can set what clip should play right after a play once. This could allow you to setup a sequence of animation clips.

Setup the SimpleAnimator

1. Create empty game object
2. Add SpriteRenderer. Set it's sprite to an idle pose to help size it.
3. Add SimpleAnimator Componenet
4. Drag the SpriteRenderer into the SpriteRenderer Slot on the SimpleAnimator.
5. Reference the SimpleAnimator in your code with code like this.

• Example code - Yours will be very different, the important part is calling the function the SetAnimationClip();