Great program by the way, doesn't help much with learning how to code your own game, if you can't see the code, but it's very nice and easy and fast to get into.
It's open-source That means a bit of a steeper learning curve, most likely, but it's all there. If you want "real" code in your games, there's always XNA, and its tutorials aren't half bad. I think you'll find, though, that learning to script in Construct is a good way to give yourself the majority of the skillset that coding requires.
And yeah, use two different animation sets. One way would be to change the animation of individual sprites (such that you're seeing a different graphic) while still retaining their same bone structure - assuming that meets your needs, of course. This is similar to what the thread you linked to suggests, although of course it's implementing something entirely different.
Alternately, you could swap in a whole new character at runtime when needed, but that's a bit tedious if you're dealing with several bones and a whole new set of animations. Or, you could just make it look like you're swapping them out, with a sufficiently clever application of visibility. Either of these will probably meet your needs a little better, since you seem to primarily be looking for different stances on the same character, rather than the same stances on different characters (as the other solution indicates).
I hope this helps