Animated Gif Background Optimization

[Sannyasin Sivakatirswami]

I am just started to get into GIF Animations and need some guidance.

How to deal with Backgrounds?...keep them in the animation or separate 
out?

Our artist has delivered some great looking files: Photoshop docs with 
layers that are set in ImageReady to frames for animation.

These layers comprise several layers of characters in different 
positions on  transparent layers and one background layer which is the 
"wall" behind them in a room. ImageReady's optimization is set to 
bounding box and I have set the image in Revolution to 
"constantMask=true" which is fine in this context because the image is 
a) not moving and b) nothing underneath it. Which solves the problem 
created by that bounding box option.  But I am interested in anyone 
else's experience. In this case the "wall" for the room the characters 
are in is applied to each frame... (thus the need for use of 
ImageReady's bounding box optimization to only render the movement of 
the characters and not iterate  the pixels in the background layer 
across all frames.) I will test this also with a  background image for 
the wall and delete that layer from the animation, as perhaps that is a 
better way to go.

But we would appreciate anyone's wisdom from experience on these 
matters...as there's no point re-inventing the wheel here... this has 
all been done before...

Also If there are better tools than ImageReady to get from the layered 
Photoshop document to a  well optimized animated GIF, we would also be 
interested of those, though ImageReady does seem very well wired for 
the job. Does anyone know if one can import a Photoshop document into 
MOTO or ToonBoom Studio? And if those tools really help much for hand 
drawn frames... they seem more for cartoonists who can't  drawn well 
(or just don't have that much time on their hands) for changes from 
frame to frame.

Also happy to do  homework if someone knows of tutorials or any 
resources we should study out...

TIA!

Sannyasin Sivakatirswami
Himalayan Academy Publications
at Kauai's Hindu Monastery
katir at hindu.org

www.HimalayanAcademy.com,
www.HinduismToday.com
www.Gurudeva.org
www.Hindu.org