I was thinking of making some modifications to the sprite object to see if I could rotate it around on the screen.

Problem is, the only effective rotation methods I've found in my Java research relies on the rotation method provided by the Graphics2D object you can obtain from a BufferedImage:

BufferedImage dimg = new BufferedImage(w, h, img.getType());
Graphics2D g = dimg.createGraphics();
g.rotate(Math.toRadians(angle), w/2, h/2);
g.drawImage(img, null, 0, 0);

Unfortunately there's only one Graphics2D in the game, obtained at the beginning. I don't quite understand how the Graphics2D object works to be honest. Am I locked in to one view, and one Graphics2D object?

Any help would be appreciated.

In my understanding, an application can own more than one Graphics2D objects, which have different duties during runtime. The one created in the beginning is the back buffer of the game engine, and you can create another one from a BufferedImage instance to manipulate the image. They have similar methods, for they're extended from the same abstract class, but do modification in different objects (the ones which create them).

I think I'm understanding better now. I can rotate a sprite, as long as I have the clipping right, by drawing on to its own Graphics2D object [ getGraphics() ]. This alters the BufferedImage which can then be drawn on to the backbuffer Graphics2D object.

If that sounds correct than I'll be on my way

ImageUtil.rotate(image, angle) should give you what you need, if you don't need portions of an angle.

However, keep in mind that images are raster graphics, not vector. Therefore, it's advised to keep your source image, and just calculate what angle you'll need when rotating. Then your rotates won't suffer problems when rotating a rotated image - these problems crop up from raster graphics, and wouldn't occur if it was vector-based.

Here is the code if you're interested:

Thanks for the info MetroidFan2002. Now I just have to work with all the other things rotating can change in a sprite. But for now this part is figured out.