I have struggled with the same problem as my competition entry is entirly made in opengl without using a wrapper.
The advantage is a ton of experience since you have to figure everything out for yourself, but on the other side, it takes a great deal longer.

Anyway, animation: The idea is actually very easy. In fact you've used it countless times already. Take 24 pictures, put them next to eachother. Device a way to make only one visible at the time and then pull the strip at 1/24th of a second and voila, animation.

Using opengl: load your texture. (1 image composed of 24 smaller images placed next to eachother) Create a timer that's able to generate ticks at fixed intervals. At every tick, clip the texture to display the correct image. Thats bascially it.