(I am SO SORRY THIS IS GOING TO TAKE TWO COMMENTS TO POST, WOW.)

I DON'T KNOW IF I WANT TO PUNCH YOU (AFFECTIONATELY) OR CRY. THESE ARE SO, SO, SO GREAT. I HAVE STARS IN MY EYES, RIGHT NOW. I AM SERIOUS. I LOOOOOOOOOOVE THESE.

Okay, first of all I need to address #09 because of your SILLY COMMENTS, WHAT EVEN. I am kind of cackling right now because I WAS GOING TO DO A BLOODY DEMON ICON (INCLUDING PAN WITH DEVIL HORNS, OMG) AS WELL, AND NOW I AM SUPER GLAD THAT I DIDN'T. I think we just share a love of fun quotes, tbh; YOU HAVE FANTASTIC TASTE IN ANY CASE. ANYWAY, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT MINE IS SUPERIOR, YOU WEIRDO. YOURS IS SO GREAT!!! I love love love the split screen between the caps. The text is AMAZING!! And the combination of the devil horns + that shit eating grin is just perfect. And, of course I love the black and white + red combo; it is brilliant! The texture work really adds to that side as well. Fantastic job with it overall, AND I WILL HEAR NONE OF THIS NONSENSE ABOUT HOW IT IS SOMEHOW INFERIOR. IT IS MAGICAL, HUSH.

Other things that are definitely superior include:

#2 because WOW the paint brush/texture work in that is absolutely insane, I am going to die. What a great way to add color variation to monochrome and still make everything look so seamless! I am also loving that you went for red and a darker cyan as opposed to, say, green because that is GREAT. Which isn't to say that green doesn't work because #5 is one of my FAVORITES, WOW. What great animation, first off. I love the use of the black silhouettes with the text inside them; how creative, quirky, and unique! And also I love the humor here for sure. It's so fantastic. I am BOWING down rn.

Also your use of duplication in this set? ABSOLUTELY SLAYING ME. SERIOUSLY. SO MANY FAVORITES WITH THAT TECHNIQUE USED. TELL ME YOUR MAGIC SECRETS, MAN. I NEED TO KNOW. #06 is flaw free, honestly. The pink + yellow combo with all the dark blacks in the shadows? GORGEOUS BEYOND BELIEF. What a fantastic color scheme choice, wow. So I absolutely adore that one. And then #07!!!! Again with the perfect duplication! It never stops! Also love the use of paint texture/brushes again. It really adds a creative and unique flavor to the icon. Also love that she's all black and white except for the color splash that is her hair! What a great choice that is! It definitely adds some focus to a chaotic composition and brings everything together perfectly! And then there's #15 which is another of my absolute favorites! The coloring, first of all, is my literally favorite thing in the whole set. I;m not even sure I can put into words how much I adore the coloring here without sounding deranged, I love it that much. The purples are my one true love, I swear. And the silhouette duplication that creates those layered shades of purple? I am weeping at the beauty and subtle creativeness that brings.

ohmygod THIS COMMENT. OR THESE COMMENTS. You are too amazing, and I'm so relieved that you seem to approve of the set cause you (along with nightbulbs) have been asking for OUAT icons for so long haha so I really didn't want to disappoint the two of you. Umm I mean I'm sorry there's not much Hook and all but it truly makes me happy that you like the entry nevertheless! ♥

Ahaha I'm so glad you don't seem to mind 9! And OMG at the way we had the same idea for that demon icon, lol. And the Rumple one too! GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE, NO? :D I'm just so happy that you like those icons in the end even though I'm 100% positive that your versions would have been much more awesome!

aw, thanks for liking 5 so much, I'm taking such baby steps with animated icons, I'm SO envious of you and all the other makers who can use more than 2 frames and make something actually interesting with the animation. (speaking of which, do you have any tips on how to minimize the quality loss from gifs..? I already learned the hard way that using gradients or shiny things is not the best idea but is there anything else I should know about how to not make things super LQ/pixelly?)

YAY, you liking the colored hair with bw image in 7 feels like an achievement of some sort cause I've been trying to go for that style for a while, I think ever since I made this piece of fug for turbo_rumble a year ago :p I'm super glad if you think 7 is a step to the right direction!
And whoa I'm just super happy that you like 18 so much and think it's different enough from the Ben/Locke icon. and LOL so glad you like 20 too, even though I kinda suspect your judgmenet might be a little biased there ;) Killian was so adorable before the whole pirate thing (and ofc he still is, just in a different way)!

AND THANKS SO MUCH FOR EVERYTHING ELSE TOO, this comment is seriously the best thing and made me so incredibly happy :3

Gifs are just so tedious, to be honest. Like, okay, STORY TIME. Way back when I decided I was determined to learn how to make gifs, I was still using PS7 where you had to do everything by hand (including importing your screencaps, oh my god), and these icons were the simplest of simple because I didn't even color them at this point. So it was literally just a TINY scene straight from a movie (Phantom of the Opera, for context) in a 100x100 box. And I swear I worked on that stupid fucking icon for five or six hours trying to figure out how Image Ready worked (because PS7 didn't have an in program animation toolbar), making my screencaps, importing them all, and everything else. AND THEN ONE OF MY SCREENCAPS WAS ONE OR TWO PIXELS HIGHER THAN ALL THE OTHERS. AND I HAD A MIGRAINE AND I RAGE QUIT. And then I didn't make anymore gif icons for quite a while. Talk about bad first impressions!

But even now with CS5 and all its little time reducing shortcuts, I still find gifs so tedious so that's why I don't like making them. That aside, I don't mind discussing how to make them with you, honestly! 'Cause if you make more fun animated icons then I don't have to, and it is basically a win-win for me. XD

So, I guess the main things I do to help keep the file size down (while still preserving quality) would be:
1. If at all possible do the majority of your coloring in a separate file, do a copy merge, and pull the screencap(s) over to the file you're going to use for giffing purposes. That way you don't have all your coloring layers cluttering up your giffing space and upping the file size.

This can be a serious pain if you're doing bigger gifs because who wants to color 20+ individual screencaps, am I right?? But PS has a thing where you can select multiple layers at once and move them to a new canvas. Um, if you're on a PC (I know nothing about Macs, I am sorry), it is a ctrl+click just like with files on the desktop (also, you can do 'select similar layers' which will allow you to select all the layers of the same type, but be wary of this because it can pick up stray layers you didn't want if they are the same type) then right click on the selected layers, duplicate layers, and make sure to change to document setting to 'new' so that you get a new canvas. THIS IS STILL TEDIOUS. But it will give you more freedom with file size. So.

Also it is good to, once you get the coloring you want, group all your coloring layers if possible because then it is easier to move them around as well.

2. DELETE ANY LAYERS YOU DO NOT NEED. If you cut out a frame or two? Delete the layers!! If you experiment with textures or coloring once you are into the giffing canvas and decide not to use them, DELETE THE LAYERS. Seriously, this helps so much, and I always forget to do it until I'm at the saving point and realize my gif is too big for fucking Tumblr.

3. When you go into 'save for web & devices' to save your gif there are some options in there where the defaults aren't necessarily the best thing for your gif quality SO. The first thing I like to do is change the diffusion to pattern because I think it looks nicer and smoother as a finish. It does up the file size slightly, but if you have the room for it, it definitely helps with quality, imo. There's also the 'colors' selection. If you get into a tight bind with file size, it is probably because your icons has 'TOO MANY COLORS' disease, alas. It is a killer for vibrant gifs, let me tell you. (I think my previous bit about doing your coloring on a separate canvas and then copy merging the whole thing so each colored screencap is one layer really comes in handy if you want vibrant stuff.) Anyway, if you get contract this disease, lowering the number of colors in your icon will lessen the file size. UNFORTUNATELY, it will also, as you might have guessed, lower the number of colors in your icon. Probably best not to go lower than 64 and not even that low unless you absolutely have to because it will change the look, feel, and overall quality of the icon because fuck colors, am I right? Boo, PS!

There are also a couple other options in this menu that help lower the file size; so if you get into a bind, experimenting with those wouldn't be a bad thing to do especially if you only need to shave off a couple of KB.

4. Gradient maps are actually really useful for gifs! Usually in their basic form though...placing a gradient map over everything will, obviously, lessen the number of colors in your gif which will allow you a higher quality finished product.

5. Light textures!! You are right! It is difficult to use them with your gifs (what a bummer) but not impossible!! I usually try to avoid blurring them too much because...you know how when you blur them out sometimes you get this ripple halo effect? Yeah, gifs make that about ten billion times worse! But if you use them without too much blur, maybe make them a little more contrasted/less bright, and be willing to layer mask them away if needed then you can definitely get some use out of them. They are easier to use when you are making something smaller as well (i.e. an icon will have an easier time of it than a full length scene meant for a Tumblr set or something).

tl;dr The less layers you have on your gif layer palette the better; get rid of anything that isn't essential, and try to do a lot of your work on a separate canvas and bring it over merged. The save menu for gifs has a lot of options that you should mess around with because they will be life savers. Colors are the enemy, and you will inevitably work for the enemy so expect EVERYTHING TO BE AGAINST YOU. Plan and edit accordingly.

I'm obviously no expert, and I know there are lots of tips and tricks that I probably don't know considering my limited experience so I highly recommend just googling giffing tips and techniques on Tumblr because they are the Kingdom of Gifs (ugh, the worst); it is inevitably where I end up when I need to know something about gifs because they seem to know everything????? So, yes, do not be afraid to venture into Tumblr for this purpose, if nothing else.

Ugh, I am so sorry about the length of this. I just don't know how to stop typing once I get started. Hopefully this is the sort of thing you were looking for? *hides*

Wow, thank you SO MUCH, these are seriously amazing tips! Like, you should have posted this to your comm as a giffing tutorial cause it's that good. And thanks for pointing out that I can drag groups of layers to new layers, I do that a lot within one icon (don't even ask why... it's just one of those things I something have to do because my way of working is completely chaotic), but never thought I could do that with a new base too. Really awesome. But omg after reading this I realize that I'll have to learn to do some really different coloring and texture use, since most of my layers usually have masks, and then I'd have to remask them for each frame, which just, nooo, do not want :p

but I definitely do want to try and see what I can do with gifs, so thanks a lot for all the advice again, you are indeed a true icon enabler ♥

(also wow that first giffing experience of yours sounds like actual torture)