Noob programmer trying to make MMA Game

Hi all, just had a question on any tips for a beginner on animation..

Namely, i want to make a functional fighting mixed martial arts game like UFC Undisputed 2009 but realize im a noob at all this creative stuff (programming, graphics & animation)

I did the ghost shooter tutorial and am also currently messing around learning how to make sprites walk smoothly and tilesets for animation and such.

But with this fighting game i tried to take a sprite image of Anderson Silva from this picture (bottom row, in the middle)

And tried to make a concept game of just trying to program keyboard commands to animation of him throwing different strikes...ex: A is his left jab, S for right straight, Z for left leg kick, X for right leg kick, then maybe Alt + key for body blows..but is there any way to make the animation look decent without having a full tileset of him facing every direction or how could i make my own? is there any way to make it look like hes actually throwing all these strikes and if so how do i go about learning to do it?

Thanks to anyone that reads or replies!

..for the image of the sprite, google mma sprite

it is the 4th one of the cartoonish mma fighters. the bottom row, in the middle the black guy is anderson silva the sprite im trying to make look likehes punching and kicking

You will have to make a set of animations for each action you want the character to be able to take. What you can do is to mirror the animation so you use the same animation both when the character face right or left.

But the better you want the animations to look, the more effort you have to put into making each of them, I don't really think there are a lot of "shortcuts" to this, if you want to maintain the quality.

I appreciate the reply! yes, I figured I'd have to make my own animations and have them in sets (like there's a tutorial on here of how to make sprites animated walking in the right direction that uses like 9 different animation sets to achieve this)

and I apologize if this is not the right place to post this or if I'm too entry level to help but! my main question I guess, is how do I even start by making my own animations? again using that sprite, do I just manipulate points in the Construct 2 or can i take the image to an editor and actually warp it and mess with it to make it look like hes moving then apply it to C2 as an animation??

keep in mind the full disclosure that is the title of this page, I'm a total noob to this stuff. My only prior knowledge with programming was basic website HTML and I had the RPG Maker for Playstation 1 lol

Also just as a gamer perspective - and this is maybe a whole OTHER topic... does anyone else have a mma/ufc style game that is finished or they are working on? My dream would be to make a real game like ufc undisputed 2009 but... Lol

scirra.com/tutorials/468/basic-fighting-game-tutorial-video-series

farsmile90's example

dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52838248/CongPuExample.capx

enjoy <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />