@Shiu, I think this is about asymmetrical character designs and animating them more faithfully rather than the classic-game-cheaty way (eg, super spineboy's gun is always on the hand that's farther from the camera, instead of always on his left hand).
If it's only an asymmetrical character design like a shoulder pad on one side, it'd only be a matter of skins. You'd need two skins (one left-facing and one-right facing, each skin only having a shoulder pad in the right place depending on the camera). And then you just switch the skins whenever your character flips in-game.
But considering a sword arm moves totally differently from a shield arm, it's inevitable that you have to make two different animations (maybe + skins OR just changing the attachment in the animations themselves). One animation would have the arm closer to the camera swinging the sword. The other animation would have the arm farther from the camera swinging the sword.
This would effectively double your number of animations, which can mean a lot of work depending on your style's level of detail.
We opted to cheat attack animations, but still do some faithful flipping on things like side-ponytails and scabbards via skins.
