Looks like the forum may have lost Heart_Flame, for whom this was originally intended, but I decided to post this anyway.
My animated avatar is only 6K and I didn't think it was that bad.
(
OK, this release
doesn't calculate numbers from the Fibonacci
sequence -
but in the
next release (incarnation?) the avatar will say "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 … who do we appreciate.")
Seriously, I don't work much with the GIF format and
I was
impressed that I could get the animated file size down that low.
I started with a single bitmap drawing that was nearly 60K - and I'd already limited the colors and textures to get it that low. The program I used - Animation Shop 3 (which comes with Paint Shop Pro) - has a file size optimization feature that is really nice. It will preview the resulting image as you work and also give you estimated download times at various bit rates.
If anybody wants, you can upload a zipped version of an animated GIF - the image just won't be shown on the forum page. If you'd like to do that, I'll run it through the Animation Shop routine and see what it can do.