How do I move a character with weapons and armour

Hi,

Whats the best way of making a character who can have different armour, weapons and boots? I can think of 2 ways from the top of my head but wasnt sure which was the best way and if there are any other ways, the 2 I can think of are...

1 - make a sprite sheet for every combination possible, so would need a sprite sheet for say red boots, steel armour, gold sword, then another for green boots, steel armour, gold sword, etc etc but this would mean I need like 30 sprite sheets or more and would also mean I need to be restrictive with the amount of different weapons and stuff I could use.

2 - have my character without any armour or boots / weapons etc on him, and then make extra sprites for those 3 things and 'pin to' the character and get them to animate based on the keys pressed just like the character does, im just worried if they go out of snyc or anything they would look silly, plus could be hard to implement.

Are there any better ways to do this?, thanks

Im not too familiar with sprite sheets, but i think the three objects is the way to go.

you can set the animation frames to change the appearance for each. Using the message broadcasts to change a variable, instead of syncing constantly.

Dude! That's a really good question, I would like to know more about that. So I guess... UP!