GIF Construction Set is the old standby - shareware I believe.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
Well, I figured out how to get Windows Movie Maker to work... But... I made a movie - a 37 second movie.
I relaize 37 seconds is far too long for an avatar or something, but eventually, I will want to make shorter things like that. Is there some way to change the file format with Windows Movie Maker? I didn't see anything.
If not, could someone post a link to this mysterious and powerful "Gif contruction set" please? 
Thank you.
Now that Adobe Image-Ready has been removed from their Suite, I find I can use their Fireworks to do pretty much the same thing. Yes, I know the program is a bit of overkill for simple 2D GiF animations, but learning one set of flexible tools helps adapt the creations for exporting to any needed format and size environment.
Okay, I know I've probably asked this before, but I just discovered that I can make animated GIFs with my World of--- I mean... "That Other Game" model viewer, and I'd like to be able to edit them a little and change their size for avatars.
I just need something simple, I don't want this big fancy program... and, yes, I tried Windows Movie Maker, but it gave me some error and said that it could be corrupted.
I doubt that considering that it plays fine when I view... But I don't know...
Thank you.