Animating a texture, what method should I use?

Hi, I am making a game where I need a ui where things will popup and go away etc.

I have tested doing things with OnGUI() and drawing a Texture using GUI.DrawTexture(), this works well, and I did some wizardry with GUI groups to create a custom source rectangle which would decrease a health bar. The problem I face is animating the textures.

I have found searched around and everything seems to point to this script: http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Animating_Tiled_texture

But it uses materials, and I only use textures. I could in theory, use my source rectangle stuff with the GUI groups to animate, but I want to know if there is a better(built in) way of doing things.

I would also like to know what you think is the best way to do a GUI. Plane meshes/GUITextures/GUI.DrawTexture? The functionality I need is being able to transform textures to a certain position, and animating the textures.