Need Suggestions for making smooth UI animation which does not bloat the file size or heat up my device?

Question

I was trying to animate some UI Images for my game, but I came across some problem.

For Context the animation which I want to use will be having some squash and stretch of the sprite(It would be like Mesh Deformation of the sprite).

I am wondering if you guys have some suggestion for smooth animation which does not bloat the file size or heat up my device?

Here are some things which I tried to solve this issue:

1. I tried to animate the Image(Changing the RectTransform and scale of Image), but it was not looking natural.

2. I tried to animate using sprite sheet, however it was taking a lot of space for the quality of the animation it was providing.

3. I tried to animate using Sprite Animation using 2D Bone, which was rendered into a RenderTexture by a camera and fed into a Raw-Image. This gave me the best animation and the size of the animation file was also not large, however this caused a lot of performance problems which lead to the test device heating. (here is the reference on the method)