Cool thanks for those tips and leads. I'll try out nuke and combustion. Haven't tried those programs before. I tried doing particle effects in maya but it takes time and there wasn't much of a libarary set. I was looking for something that was quicker and easier and wanted to learn a program that was dedicated on doing vfx
I guess anything will do that can export the animation as a image sequence (i.e. frame_001.jpg, frame_002.jpg, frame_003.jpg, ...) with data you can then create a image strip or sprite table using for example: GlueIt (which preserves alpha transparency) xnView's contact sheet tool or some Photoshop actions with some time…