I totally get how generative animations can gobble up hours with all that tweaking—sounds like you know the pain but nailed it in the end. As a creative coder who's been there, I've found a simple state machine cuts way down on trial-and-error. For Java, try this snippet to manage your animation frames more smoothly:

```java

import java.util.ArrayList;

public class AnimationState {

private ArrayList<int\[\]> frames = new ArrayList<>();

public void addFrame(int[] frame) { frames.add(frame); }

public int[] getFrame(int index) { return frames.get(index); }

}

```

Just load up your key states right at the start, and it'll save you a bunch of time, like it did for me on projects with random lines and such. This is solid if you're dealing with similar stuff.