GIF Animation (And an ethical issue on the side)

In a computer graphics class, one of the projects we were required to do was a GIF animation. This raised a slightly thorny issue as GIF Animations go against everything I have ever learned as a web designer. I started with a Circle Moving around the screen: I then made the circle a ball and made it bounce: For the final project, I used the 4 variants of Ubuntu Linux to make myself feel better about doing a GIF animation in the first place: