if it's not possible to blit only a part of the image you could save the animation in different files.

anim_01
anim_02
anim_03

and so on.

Then just blitt the diffrent images.
I do it this way.

You can load one tga file and create individual memory bitmaps using it. Mapping the right alpha values is an easy task.
(edited for clarification)

gifs can't be translucent like I described, they can only be transparent.
I'm useing the tga format.

cool, that works great, cat!

I wanted to do just that, so I went and tried it, tapir.
rotate_sprite works, it keeps the alphas and evrything.
What you gotta make sure to do is draw/rotate it onto a new bitmap, and then draw the new bitmap instead of the sub_bitmap.

maksed_blit skips the keycolor, he wants translucency = alpha