Animation inside an animation

I want to make more ASL icons, however my "talent" gets me stuck with using words that do not contain "J" or "Z". If anyone has any suggestions on how I can do this, I would appreciate it. I cannot split the frames out, because that would make the word "Zebra", for example, hold on the letter "Z" for way too long, and would not match up to the others (It would come out looking like the signer forgot they were signing, which is not ideal).

My current icon ("Afraid of butterflies") is the basic idea of what I'm going for as far as how I want it to look.



Z


E


B


R


A


I'm pretty basic with the way I make the icons I have now. I just stick them into unfreez to make them animate. I also use the GIMP to help me size icons/play with other photos.

Thank you!