How do you get an avatar for the bottom?

[[TDA]Dionysios]

Man I would really like to know what y'all use to really create the cool looking ones with the animated GIF's or whatever that is. That is tight. I'm just using some lame MS Paint and Gimp cuz it's free and I haven't had a version of PhotoShop in too long. Is there any freeware or tips on how or where I can go to make something really cool like what I see alot of other people using? Everytime you guys change your avatar it looks cooler than the one you had before. I wanna do that