Make an animation from a strip sheet of stills.
a) one where the slides are of the same size (easier).
Find a strip sheet of sprites and save it to your computer.
a) On gamemaker, click on the add a sprite button. When the pop-up appears, click on edit sprite. A screen will appear. click on file, then on create from strip. Load the strip sheet and click open. An edit screen will pop up. Under the number of images section, type how many sprites there are in the row/column. If the sprites are in a row, type the number of sprites in the images per row section. Adjust the size of the box, so it fits the sprites perfectly, by using the image width and height sections. When the sprites are lined up the boxes perfectly, click ok.
To preview the sprite, click on show preview. If the animation is too fast, click on the animation tab, then click on stretch. Type the number of frames you want the animation to be, so it will slow it down. The more frames, the slower it will be. To test the animation in a room, create an object and use the sprite you just made for the sprite. Play the room to test the animation.
I found this game information on http://pikmik.wordpress.com/page/2/