Simpler way of doing direction-based sprite animation?

Hello! I was following this old guide: scirra.com/tutorials/413/di ... -animation

It's easy to follow and all, but since it's 5 years old, is there a simpler way of doing that? I have nothing against it ofcourse.

'Simpler' can be relative.

What I would 'simplify' in that tutorial is the use of the 'Up', 'Down', 'Left', and 'Right' words and replace them with actual angles. For example, the animation names would be: Walk0, Walk90, Walk-90, Walk180, etc. Then I would use the 8Direction.MovingAngle value directly and construct the animation name:

'Walk' & Player.8Direction.MovingAngle

That way I can avoid all the checks.