Thank you for your reply and for kindly providing an example. That's pretty much the look that I've wanted to achieve with my sprites, so UV shifting is the way to go. Unfortunately the example doesn't want to work properly. I commented out a missing json file, but the animation of the sprites seem to be off (see gif). Anyway, I was pointed in the right direction and will figure something out. Thanks again!
EDIT:
I've modified it this way
inc wo
if wo = 6 then wo = 0
SetObjectUVOffset(wizard, 0, wo, 0)
Now the animation works. If I combine that with a timer how long the animation should take in a function, I am set.