How do people make those li'l animated avatars, with the stick people? AlexT (my bro) has one and new chap Nix has one too! do you need special software for it?

(i will ask my brother tomorrow but just wanna see if anyone here can tell me aswell)

They will be animated gifs.

Not really special software as such just any program that supports animated gifs. I think paint shop pro might support them not sure. I'm pretty sure adobe premier can output them as will most video authoring/conversion software.

The only problem with them is you only get 256 colours for every image in the animation so they only really work for things like stick figures/drawings/few colour images.

The few attempts I have had in creating them by converting a avi they looked like absolute **** yet were fairly big in file size so personally not really bothered much with them.

your best bet is to do a google image search for animated avatars.

Before you start just check the size in pixels and kb you are allowed and then scan through them - that's what I did anyway.

Even if you find a Gif image that's too big you can reduce it by using an online editor such as GifWorks

You only needed to pick up the phone. Though i think i'd be poking you in the eye if you called me at 3am! LOL