What I use is bounding box for collisions and then a model for visuals (I use U, V coordinates to animate my npcs).
Here, I've made a small demo for you to see how it works:
Download link

And a little screen shot


You can simply use sprites as well (instead of models as I did). The main difference will be the way you will play animations. I use U, V and you will use my->parent->frame to play sprite sheet animations.