Since I'm currently dead in the water when it comes to scanning anything in, I figure I could have some fun making some GIF images. Unfortunately, I...
1. Know nothing of making an animated GIF other than it must be very irritating and time consuming, but I got time to blow anyways.
2. Don't know what programs work good for making these things.

so, what can I look for?

I've only ever used Adobe's Imageready, which used to be packaged with photoshop. However this work comp has the whole Adobe CS3 package on it and there's no Imageready- so I'm not sure it exists anymore. :[

Still, if you have photoshop on your computer, it's worth checking to see if you have Imageready too.

Imageready is still there. I think it's under the windows tab as "animation" now.

I don't know how it works past PS 7.0 though because I have yet to try using it in CS3 or CS4.

Edit: Not too different actually. Just turn on and off layers you want to appear in each frame pretty much.

macromedia flash.

Jasc Animation Shop works well too.

Sadly I have never found a free gif maker that wasn't really confusing to use and/or didn't save the files with way too many KB or whatever. You'd think by NOW there'd be a nice free one available.

gimp is free. you can make the animations through layers, just download it and the package.

Agreed.

Flash saves shiiiiitty GIFs. Sometimes.

I use Jasc Animation Shop 3. There was one I used before that that was free, but then it stopped working and I couldn't find a new version or where I got it at all anymore. And it was really good, too.

No budget, low tech option:

Microsoft paint and Unfreez. Save individual frames as gifs and stich together in Unfreez. Incidentally, that was my first introduction to digital animation. Sad but workable -- and free.

u can get fantamorph, i have it, and u can get it for free here http://www.fantamorph.com/ just click the blue download button