image compression?

[Zhongda]

iv seen very long animations here and there.. and some guy told me that his 30 second animation took less than 150 kbs of space, cause he compressed the images..
when i make an animation.. one as short as this one takes around 250 kb
http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/5193/darcia35wu.gif

how do i compress my images?

[Therahedwig]

uhm... you reduce the number of colours in the animation, which you can do with a proffesional photo-manipulation program...

[Zhongda]

where can i get the proggram from?