But first, what is a "Sprite" animation?

Those pixel drawings of the characters you see in that video at the bottom? Yeah, they're called sprites. I dunno why though.
So the animations are created by using a collection of sprites which are placed in a proper sequence and position.
A picturey explanation:

Now up there, each pose is called a 'frame'. Which means there are 4 frames.
Usually, 24 frames must be used in order to produce just 1 second worth of animation.
Try to calculate how many frames there are in my video. ;)
(first person to guess correctly gets a hi-5.)

How's the animation made from it?

It's a long process. Imagine a treadmill's moving floor. You have single photos of each pose. You go on sticking the photos in the correct order, one by one on that floor. After that's done, you start the treadmill WHILE ONLY LOOKING at the middle of the treadmill.
You still with me right?
So what happens then is, the frames appear one after another, quickly, for a short period of time which finally gives us the illusion of animation! Do google it if you're still confused, animation really is an interesting thing!

Finally, here's the 6-year-old end process!

Conclusion

Did you like it? P:

PS: I only created the animation, the music and sprites in the video belong to their respective owners.
The top image is made by Lillyarizona.