dru, it's not free, but don't you have photoshop already? you can make animated gifs by putting each frame of the animation on a separate layer, then saving as a gif; i believe the easiest way to manipulate the animation is through the "save for web" command, but only your help menu knows for sure
i use arcsoft photoimpression instead of adopey photochop... i will investigate... all the commands are different....
for instance i never get it when photo shop users say saving a quality changes the image size, the two are independent for me...
just say no to photochop!