It's normal for the character animation to not match the frame rate of the game itself, so I don't think anyone will mind that.
I need to make more time to tinker with Game Maker but I've enjoyed it so far. I had noticed screen tearing but GM does have VSYNC toggle, just searched and read this "In Global Game Settings, go to the Windows -> Graphics. Toggle the switch "Use synchronization to avoid tearing." That should enable VSync, so that your view doesn't do this." So I gotta try that.
TomFulp
I like the blue electricity bolts in the top right of your bottom picture.
Is Barfbarians running at 60fps or 30? Still feeling good with GameMaker?
BoMToons
BB is currently running at 60 fps (though you can set the animations themselves to run independent of the overall game, so those are running at 12 fps I think... it has no problem so far running at 60, but not sure how I feel about the chunky 12 fps anims being moved around with smooth 60 fps code... most people won't notice probably?)
Still loving GameMaker, are you warming up to it?