unity - Animating 2d character which can wear items?

In my game the player can control a character which can wear items. Now it is not visible but I would like to make it visible like for example in Terraria, Starbound, etc.

In my game a player can only face right or left. (right is the mirrored version of left) Only the character's feet and arms are moving during the game.

Is there a simple way in Unity to stick the sprite of the items to "bones"? (like in 3d modelling) Or how could I implement this "equipment on character" system?

I found some assets but I dont have much money.

Thanks in advance! :)

Answer

The usual way to implement different clothes with two-dimensional sprites is paperdolling.

You have a spritesheet for the "naked" player-character which is fully animated. You then create a separate spritesheet with the exact layout for each piece of equipment. In the game, these spritesheets are drawn on top of each other.

The effort for this is animation_frames * items which means it is not much effort when you have few animations of few items, but increases a lot when you have a lot of both. At some point it will be less work to use full-fledged 3d models. With skeleton-based animation you don't need to animate each item individually so the effort to add a new animation or item does not increase depending on how many items or animations you already have.