Here, I've made a quick test with an explosion animation. Just click and your mouse pointer will explode. Once the animation is over the sprite will be invisible. I do three checks in this situation;
1) Check for if there is an explosion, if not create one
2) If explosion is created play explosion sprite
3) If explosion is done reset explosion sprite
Each one is dependent on the variable
exp. This is so the sprite is only effected by certain condition during each stage of it's life. I'd turn this into a function so you can call it whenever needed easily.
Hope this helps. Files attached.
