Most of the animation is centered around yourself. THere are different colors, flashes, effects, and styles, although spells of a similiar line (one that upgrades another) will typically retain the same animation.
To get the best spell effects you need to have your video settings set to balanced or better, although you can still get some effects at lower settings.
Since this game is so graphics-intensive, you'll need a semi-good system to play with all the wiz-bang graphics. At least 256MB video card and 2GB RAM. Although you can play with less gear, it will drop your graphics.