If you want to do more than simple rotations and translations, then this presentation will help you learn some new tricks. I cover chaining/grouping animation and particle effects. Demos can be found here: https://github.com/rob-brown/Demos.
efficient, and easy to use Provides a high-level, layer-centric abstraction Not intended for high-end games Use OpenGL, Cocos2D/3D, Unity, or UDK instead