Agility: Speed up the animation by like x4 and loop it a few times, so its like the the 'mon running back and forth to pick up Speed. I don't think this one needs any particles.
Make the user speed up after each dance. Sounds good.
Quiver Dance: Current animation is solid, but I think it would stand out a little more if you added the same sort of "puffs" of color you see in Dragon Dance, except a lime-ish green color similar to the icon for Bug type. That, or replace the little white balls in the animation with green ones.
That means I'd have to add a new particle. I feel like there are ways around this.
Coil: At the very least this could use the "squish" animation (Body Slam, etc.) on the user as if its coiling its body tightly, maybe throw in some purple color for flare.
I already have an idea on how to make this. It will look like it's animated in BW.
Curse: This one is tough, but I think it should somehow involve implied harm to the user, as it lowers Speed for non-Ghosts and deals damage to Ghosts. Crimson and/or purple are the colors usually associated with the move, so maybe there's something to work with there. This is one of the more important changes IMO because Curse is a historically important moves in older gens (GSC Snorlax) and is still a relevant move in Gen 6, so it needs an animation for sure, I'm just not sure what kind of animation would fit it.
For the time being, this is not getting animated. Reasons being the client is hard to read regarding this part of the code. I tried before and gave up.
Work Up: The description for what this move actually is is pretty vague as to what it is, so you could probably go a bunch of directions with it, but I'm thinking maybe add the surrounding "glow" effect (Tail Glow, Calm Mind, Acid Armor) as either just red (matching in game representation) or red and then blue (representing that its raising Atk and SpA). Honestly this is the least relevant move on here so the animation isn't entirely important, but for the sake of Mega Pidgeot (which is the only 'mon that viably uses the move AFAIK), some sort of animation would be nice.
I thought I made Work Up animate like Bulk Up. If not, that's what's going to happen. Or I can just recicle the Calm Mind animation and use flareballs.
And these are the moves I think need new particles. As always, I'm not a skilled digital artist by any means so the proposed particles and mockups are just rough placeholders, but hopefully they get my ideas across well enough.
"Gear" moves: "Gear" is a pretty concrete visual that's hard to represent with existing particles. I think it's safe to assume that Magearna will get these as well, so they'll have continued purpose as we move into Gen 7.
This particle is usable
Shift Gear: Place the particles above the user (like Nasty Plot) and have two mirrored gears slide past each other, one starting up and moving down and the other doing the reverse, before they fade out.
Sounds good. I need to try it out.
Automatize: Place a single particle over the user and repeat the "sparkle/shine" particle before the gear fades out.
That sounds too simple. I'll reflect on how I should redo this later.
Gear Grind: Not a setup move but it would be a waste not to use the particle for it, if added. I'm imagining one gear on each side of the foe, then they move move in and cause a horizontal "squish" animation on the defender. If this isn't possible (I've only see the squish animation used vertically) then the same gear movement would probably stand on its own or with some minor knockback animation, or even using the gear as a projectile could work.
Sounds good. I'll have to use contactattack + the gears slamming from opposite directions, or something similar to Cross Chop (coming diagonally).
"Shell" moves: Shell Smash is one of the most powerful boosting moves in the game, and it's relevant in pretty much every metagame from NU to Balanced Hackmons, so I definitely think a unique animation is in order. Unfortunately it's a little harder to come up with other moves that use the particle, so this falls short of the "3 moves per particle" rule unless you wanted to animated the move Withdraw (which sucks). Personally I think it's worth making an exception for but I'll leave that to your own judgement.
Funny story, I was actually thinking of animating Shell Smash yesterday and look at that, a brand new particle. Using it
Shell Smash: Place the particle over the user, and then animate a barrage of "pow" particles as the shell shakes like its being smashed. Maybe at the end, as it becomes translucent and starts to fade out, enlarge the particle (like the effect with Night Shade) before it disappears. I don't have access to the PS! pow particle so this mockup is using my own, but I think it will look a lot better with the actual PS! assets.
I'm not placing it over the user. The user will shrink and dissapear as the shell comes up, then the user expands as it explodes the shell while shaking violently. I guess I can use the POWs for that.
Razor Shell: Alongside the blue particles typically used for the attack, add the shell particle on impact.
Right Slash + Shell (sliding diagonally) + iceball to represent impact on the defender
And finally, while it's not a setup move, I think it would be cute if "sleeping" moves (Rest, Sleep Talk, Snore, even just the status itself) had little Z's to go with them.
The way I imagine the current rest/sleep talk animation is the Mon sleeping while the tipical snot balloon growing to represent sleep, so I feel like it's fine as it is.
I just named more than three moves right there, and if you really wanted to you could reuse the Z particle as some sort of announcement for a Z-move in Gen 7, though I don't think it's necessary.
I already made an animation for when the Z-Move is activated. I'm not sure if it was pushed to the server though. Basically it would be similar to the growth animation
Feel free to ignore this post to talk about smaller scale projects. I was just bored and wanted to spitball some ideas, whether or not any of them actually happen.
Cheers!