My animated sprite resets from 24x24 to 24x6

I just started and spent an hour animating my first sprite with 8 frames. But whenever I reopen the project, the sprite is reduced into 8 consecutive vertical slices of the first 2 frames. And the convenient copy I added is unchanged: it has the 8 unreduced frames it's supposed to have. Well not really: because it is unchanged from before the last time I edited it before closing the project.

It's showing that it's supposedly saved my changes, so I guess the draw and/or update function just hates animated sprites?

Open the Sprites Tab: Select the problematic sprite. Use the "Strip to Animation" Feature: If you are drawing the sprite in one long sheet, make sure the total width of the image is an exact multiple of the number of frames (e.g. if 1 frame = 32px, then 8 frames should be exactly 256px). Check the "Animation" Button: Make sure that in the sprite editor, the Animation option is active and the number of frames listed is indeed 8. If it still says 2 (or the default), MicroStudio will try to "force" your image to fit into those 2 boxes.