Well hello guys. I have a brother who would like to know what kinds of programs are used to create those overhead character animations. Such as the player's character in Crimsonland, the torso(not animated just rotated through code) and the legs(which are animated, my brother would like to know how to do these kinds of animations quickly, easily and efficiently). Thank you.

Not sure how Crimsonland did it but they appear to be 3D models rendered from above in 2D. I use Poser for this but SpriteForge, Blender and a few others tools can do the same.
Alternatively you can use pure 3D with the same overhead camera method.

Well... I'm kinda shocked here. All this time I thought there was a 'specialised 2D program' for the job, when all this time all they were doing was using a 3D modeler like 3Ds Max, not saying that 3Ds Max is easy to work with... but... just suprised.

Well thank you :).