I share this sentiment with many others here. Rather than wasting your time on (poorly) done animations using bones and nodes, it's better to create a loop of two to four static images enhanced with some Renpy magic. The result will look just fine.
I don't know if anyone remembers what I did with the game, but I basically took one of the existing loops, adjusted the timing, baked some sfx's into the mix and the scene instantly felt better. If I did it without access to the original assets, it should be a cakewalk for them in terms of both quality and speed.