Ok first step in Creating your own animaed gifs, is to get Paint Shop Pro 7 or 6, with Animation shop 2 or 3. (Paintshop Pro 7 comes with Animation shop 3), and (Paint shop Pro 6 comes with Animation shop 2). Photoshop is good, but it is very complicated for many people.

download:
Paint shop Pro 7
Paint shop Pro 6
2
 

• The Basics

       Animation shop includes about 12 basic tools, and 4 advance ones.Beginning with the basic tools, I will first start of with the zoom tool, is  used for making character gifs. It allows you to view the character more better, in order to change very major, and minor details. The registration mark tool, is used for keeping track of where a charater was placed. It places a little or big cross on the file that can help you paste characters in a correct postioned. When your done with it, you can simply remove it by clicking on clear. The Crop tool, is used for cutting out certain parts of a gif, but it only covers  parts of the gif in a square. The mover tool, is used to move a frame from a gif in any direction. I basically used it for a homemade : ) shake screen effect. by slightly moving it up and down. The dropper tool is used for getting colors for any gif, I also used this tool for making characters. You wont have that much of a use for it though. The brush tool will be greattly used for making any kind of gif. You will greatly need it for making characters, and will need it in battle gifs, to chang minor mistakes. The Eraser brush for animation shop SUCKS!!!! : ( .I barelly use it because when you increased the size you can mess up your gif very easily. It gives this unwanted fade effect. Like in Paintshop Pro your allowed to change the hardness to get rid of the fade effect. The flood fill tool can be used for many things. You can use it to make a character gif or you can use it to make certain parts of a gif transparent, by clickong on canvans color. The text tool is not recommended to be used that, is one tool dont I recommened you not use because, it pails in comparihson to the one in Paint Shop Pro. I only use that tool for my sagas. If you going to use that for your sagas, dont get fancy!. Only use MS Sans Serif. The line tool and shape tool, can be used for teleporting, that I will further explain in the next section. It can be also can be used to make addons, and fireballs. The arrow tool, can be used to dag frames onto another, file or the same. The tools, that really have no use, is the inionskin,copy, paste (because the arrow tool covers that job), browse(slows down computer), animation,banner wizard, and pasting.
          The advance tools are the Effects,Replace color, Frame properties, and the rotateing tools.

-Saving Gifs

-Character and Battle Gifs

-Battle gifs

          Okay when first starting a gif. You can either : Make a battles gif, or you can make a character gif. First I will go threw making a Battle gif. First you will need, each character doing. attacks, moving, and hit reactions. You will also need add ons, such as fireballs, sparks (for when an attack his thrown). It is recommended to put all character attacks in one file. Instead of openning like a million files. If you want to choose a backround, you can if you want, but it doesn't load correctly on a web page. 
             Okay now lets begin making this battle gif. One thing to know never rush a battle gif. For me its take me about 5 hours straight in order to complete my most recent battle gif. Okay most problems people have when making a battle gif, is keeping the 2 characters from jumping up and down. When there in a stand postion or just in a ready postion. You can use a tool in animation shop called registration mark. Set it on Spanning cross. It will set a mark on every frame.Try to put it on the mark where the character is standing.(Try to use is head, or his toe) . As you see here in the examples. If you starting off with a backround, put the backround in properly, and duplicate it about 20 or 30 times. 
             Know everybody makes this mistake (even I use to) when using backrounds. You do not drag the character onto the frame. You insert new frames and drag the character there. It is way easier to handle it this way, because th other way, will mostly likely leave you haveing whatever characters jumping up and down. It also allows you to work on the frames better. Espically when exporting frames to Paint Shop Pro for extra effects. When finish whatever scenes you did, in the empty frames (that are transparent). To get them in the backround, you simply use the registration mark, selected the frames you want, and drag them onto the backround. Now lets go threw th basics when making fight scenes. Alot of people (even I used to) make punches and kicks that dont connect correctly. Fight scenes can be one of the longest scenes to create. It depends on how you make. It is best to make it one character doing his attacks, then you follow up with the defending character, you can switch here and there with offending and defending, but dont get carry away with it or it wont look correctly. Now to make a punch or kick connect correctly, you must duplicate the frame that doesn't connect (once again) use a registration mark, and drag it to the other frame overlapping it so it would look correct. Espically when a punch or kick is thrown to the gut.
              Now with fireballs, they can be one of the hardest things to accomplish. Small blastes are easy, but make sure you have an explosion to back it up, because sparks can not be used in this field. Big fireballs can be a very serious problem, with the superbutaden 2 and 3 blast, you most have a beginning and ending of a blast. You can't just have the beginning it must have both parts. Once you've done that its really nothin to it, its just the fireballfights. You must use proper sparks, for when the fireball is clashing, and making a fireball fight with superbutaden 2 and 3 sprites can be difficult. The angle at which the fireball meets must be equal or the sprite (for the fireball fight) will not look right. Alot of people of been concerned with the fireballs I use I use in my recent battles gifs....well those are made from scratch. You'll learn about that in the next section. Thats basically it for making battles, but when making long battles that include over 200 frames, try to make the size 256 width and 224 height, anything smaller is okay.