Open your animation program, such as Adobe Fireworks.
Open a new file.
Draw the individual images with their slightly differing appearances that will be used in the animation. Use the pen tool. This will include individual moving parts like legs, wings or mouths.
Place relevant images into layers. Multiple images can be "layered" on top or behind each other. Name the layers.
Open the frames panel and determine what frames images should be in or how many frames the image should repeat in. The key image that is to be animated should likely be placed in "Frame 1."
Individual portions of the image can be selected and moved with the subselection tool. Add images to frames for as long as the animation has to be.
Select the frame rate, or playback speed of the graphics. Additionally, determine whether the graphic is to loop or not.
Preview the animation in the preview window.
In the optimization window select the maximum number of colors as 256.
Export the file as a GIF. In the optimization window, the animation can also be set to "slice" into an existing animation.