My Wacky Animated Signatures... So How Do I Do It?

I get asked this a lot on the forums and occasionally in-game as well so I figure i may as well just post it here so i won't have to re-type this over and over and over...  it's much simpler than most people realize, as long as you're already somewhat comfortable using the tools in Photoshop.

This is an example of what I'm talking about:

If you're familiar with Fiesta, and you must be if you're reading my blog or else why would you be here?, you know that Grandma Myzen is an NPC that resides in Elderine.  She doesn't move, she just stoically stands there asking you to do some mundane tasks for her like killing Kebings, finding a lost amulet, gathering ingredients for a soup, etc.  She's basically just there to progress the storyline.  So how did i make a statue of a character move?  We'll get to that shortly.

Advanced AOE Party Guide - Fatal's Version

most people know the basics of an AOE (area of effect) party, the type of group dynamic that pulls many mobs to a central location and bombards them into bits of Exp and loot... well anyway, i've now gone through these parties with all four classes (10x Warlock, 9x Ranger, 9x Paladin, 9x Warrior) and am comfortable carrying all roles, i think i'm fairly skilled any way... i posted this on the OutSpark forums a while ago as an addition to another forum-goer's principles of basic AOE'ing... this was back in February of 2010, but the information is still relevant.

here was the original posting:  http://outspark.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2995105#post2995105