Pre-spriter, I used these sorts of tools on pixel projects at gameloft and glu. These tools were the inspiration for spriter. If you want to do pixel animation in it, it's better to only use it for translated tweens - basically just nudging pieces around to make for smoother animations. Any time you want to rotate, I'd recommend drawing a new part.
I dont have many examples from those projects, but here's a really simple one:
This sprite was basically a single frame with nudged pieces, and one extra frame for the front arm and wheel. Just with that alone, I was able to pull of a convincing animation in a short amount of time.
I also used a similar method for a flash game. Not pixel art, but same idea. redrawn rotations, translated tweens.
http://www.danfessler.com/work/creepanims/and here's Opie, just for kicks: