how to animate without an animation program!

so I've recently put several animated bases up for sale, and I've noticed that most people don't seem to want to fill them out, despite the P2U option costing significantly less than paying me to fill it out for them. so I'm putting out another quick tutorial on how to do the thing! I used Sai for this, but it should work for most art programs.

why not just download a real animation program? well, this is intended as 1) a simple method for non-animators who only want to dabble, and 2) a gateway drug for people who want to try animation, but don't want the hassle of buying/learning a new program. I started out doing simple gifs this way and once I discovered how much I enjoyed animation I eventually caved and bought aseprite.

another quick tip: don't use the airbrush/blur/etc. tools when doing art for a gif animation. gifs have a limited amount of colors they can display, and anything too complex color-wise will cause bad artifacting in the gif and make you cry. if you want a gradient, do it manually.