Animations

Hello everybody

I need to know how is possible to create animations through the all screen, like the famous candy crush. I refer in particular the animations of those special sweet (the one made of five) which sprays beams to every candy with the same color. (image 1)

Or another example could be the union of the two special candy which the combined effect is to hit every other sweet vertically and horizontally 3x3 (image 2).

I founded interesting also the effect triggered by the elimination of a obstacle and a sweet, that sprays stars which falls down in a probable random way.

Someone have adviced me to use sprites, but I don’t really figure out how should I use them, to achieve these effects… Someone can help me? There is something better than sprites’

http://static.leonardo.it/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2014/01/candy_xrush_saga.jpg (image 1)

http://www.candy-crush.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/3st3.jpg   (image 2)