From what i know, game maker library like Unity can inport several file like .mb .ma, .max, and .blend. But Phaser 3 seem to only hava atlas import as animation. I want to ask:
Well the main way to create use animations is frame by frame, but you could also skeletal animation, with tools like Spine (link to homepage is a paid tool) or DragonBones (link to github free but "dead", homepage not more reachable).
There are some plugins for blender like "COA Tools for Blender", that could do this, but most projects seem to be abandoned or rely on other abandoned projects for game engine support. So in short if you want need skeletal 2d animation and have some money to spare, I would say spine2d would be the way to go. (Or simply pay an freelance, that has a license, to create the art)
In any case here is a Demo of Spine in action and here is one of DragonBones.
The I can't believe the performance of a webgame is slow because of loading assets. Except if you are really load extremly big and alot of assets, at the beginning. If this is the case, you could:
But performance issues are hard to diagnose without the application, since they are often very specific to the application.