Yeah, you can use the by using the shaders directly, that's what I do in the preview. The other option is to use a large spritesheet, for example 1200 frames played back at 60fps will give you a 20 second loop.
excuse my ignorance, but when you mean shaders... is that a separate folder? so is that in the code, what I mean is.. what is the shaders lol thx again.
The shaders are programs you can execute on the gpu. The way to do it differs depending on what engine you are using. But usually you apply it as a material to some surface.