not free but does the job "jasc animation Shop 3.02" (from my uncle)
regards
just look at my avatar, the scene needed to be done with repeated pics from a few frames before and a few with bigger "pauses" than the other "normal" frames because of the VERY LOW allowed size of these gifs...
if you've got photoshop cs2, then you can use it to edit/create animated gifs. and if you have photoshop, then you have image ready. so, there are 2 programs (if you already have PS). and if not, then gimp is a good choice.