Especially since the background can/should be stationary, there are ways to make it look a lot better. If it's all splotchy because of file size constraints, you should instead adjust it so the background is stationary, then copy the background from one of the frames to all the others so it's exactly the same. This is what I did on my signature and on the hamster flip avatar to make them high quality and still animated. Also, cutting off the edges where the avatar circle is slightly reduces the file size; did that on the hamster flip avatar, too.