Start leaning Adobe Flash. Flash is the easiest software for it. Follow these steps to create a simple animation. 1. Open a new document. 2. Draw a picture on the document. 3. Press F6, this will create a keyframe, now draw another picture. 4. Press F12. now you will see the animation 5. Return to flash, save the animation in .gif format. There are tons of flash tutorial available on internet. Read them and experiment by yourself.
try this link, it shows you how to make them in imageready, the tutorial looks long but its really simple. myjanee.com/tuts/animation/animation.htm
Hi Energetic, Your tools are good. Flash is the easiest way to create gif images. Many of my contacts use Photoshop & Flash. There are many online tools which we can easily find it out on Google.