Animated GIF Tutor -- 1 Hour Max

Hello! I have an animated GIF that I found that I would like to change. I have Coffeecup GIF Animator and can see all the frames, but I'm not sure how one makes/edits all the frames....They probably are not done by hand...It is just lines of text that transitions into other lines of text in 4 increments...How does one make the incremental frames? I am looking for someone that knows the most efficient (easy, easy) ways to animate GIFS that can share their desktop with me and show me the basics...(preferably with Open Source tools) I am not looking for a whole tutorial...I just have one GIF I found online and I want to change it to meet my needs and tweak it so it is not a copy of the one I found. Thank you, Mark G. Animation, GIF, Flash