An inexpensive and easy to use animation program is available through
www.coffeecup.com
They have a variety of software at reasonable prices and you can download
free trial versions before purchasing. (Purchase price for the latest
version of the gif animator is $30)
With the gif animator, you simply select different images for the animation,
copy them into the program, set how long you want each image to appear, and
then save it.
I haven't done much with any type of animation and don't teach it, but if
you're interested in quickly getting results rather than spending a lot of
time learning the process, this might work for you.