I'm making a Fire Emblem-esque game. There are very cute 2D frames I made for each character, and, like a game like Fire Emblem, I want these characters to animate constantly.

To circumvent the graphics programming involved I came up with a novel idea! I would make each character an animated gif, and only in special conditions ever halt their constant movement - in that case just change what image is being displayed.

Simple enough. But I have a dilemma - I want the background of my .gifs to be transparent (so that the "grass" behind each character naturally shows, as per the screenshot - which has them as still images with transparent backgrounds). I know how to make a background transparent in numerous tools (GIMP, Photoshop). But it seems every .gif creator replaces the transparent background with something and I can't edit it back to transparent.

Is it possible to have a .gif with a transparent "background"? Perhaps my knowledge of file formats is limiting me here.