Requirements for the way I did it:

Adobe ImageReady (usually comes with photoshop)
screenshot-taking experience
Internet Anagram Server
Patience

General Notes:

Read the entire instructions over at least once before you start.
Save often.. After every transition is a good bet. I like to save multiple copies (forumsig1, forumsig2, forumsig3) just in case for some reason I want to go back.

1. Sign with desired signature somewhere on the forums, and take a screenshot* of of the text. Then open it in ImageReady and crop it down a bit (can be done in Preview too). You'll want extra room, at least two letter's-worth on either end, and at least a line above and below. You'll need this space to maneuver the letters around.

* I'm not very good with fonts, I have no idea what font and what color the standard post text is in. If you can figure those both out, or if -z- can tell us, then just open a file in ImageReady (with the right-sized margins, and a clear background) and type in your name. Rasterize the type and skip to step 3.

2. Now take your screenshot with name and white background and blow it up until you can see individual pixels clearly. I find that 800% tends to be a good size. Duplicate the background layer so you have a backup. Then take the eraser in 1-pixel size and carefully trim off all the white space around the letters. The font for the forums is anti-aliased, so make sure not to trim off pixels which form the shapes of the letters. Any pixels which are even faded green, leave in. When you've trimmed it down, you can test to make sure the letters are fine by creating a white background by using a white layer beneath your text. If the letters still look right, you're good to go.

3. Now take your layer which is your name only, with a clear background. Use the rectangular marquee and select the first letter. Make sure to include all the pixels of the letter, including faded pixels, but do not select any pixels from other letters, and try to keep the rectangle as small as possible for convenience. Hit command-J on a mac, or (I presume) control-J on a PC, which will create a new layer with the selection. If this doesn't work, try copy-paste, but one way or another get a layer for that letter. Name it the name of the letter, i.e. "A". Repeat this for each letter of your name. You should end up with a the same number of layers as letters in your name, each layer containing the corresponding letter.

4. Go to the Internet Anagram Server and type in your name. Once you get the list of anagrams, look through them and pick out however many of them you want (I would say no more than 5 for convenience). Arrange them in the order you wish, but I would suggest thinking a little beforehand about which transitions would be easiest. For instance, if Ksire tsa was an anagram I wanted to use, I probably wouldn't want it to be next to Asterisk because it would involve most of the letters moving a long ways. However, I probably also wouldn't want to use an anagram like Astre isk, because all that would happen would be two adjacent letters swapping places– not a very impressive transformation. I hope you can see how these apply to your name.

5. Take your letter layers and make a copy of them for safekeeping. Then duplicate the letter layers again, and organize them into the first anagram. Center it in the middle of your document (in the same place as your name was) and make sure all the pixels show, don't overlap any. Duplicate the letter layers (arranged in the anagram) and merge them, naming the new layer after the anagram. Now you have a layer for that anagram, but still have the original, separate copies of the letter layers. Repeat those steps until you have layers for each anagram. At this point you should have a layer for each anagram, a layer for your name, backup letter layers and in-use letter layers.

6. Now create a set (little folder icon at bottom of layers palette) for each transition, and name it after the transition. For instance, I have Ast-Art, Art-Sea, Sea-Task, Task-Tear, Tear-Rest, and Rest-Ast, the same number of transitions as anagrams + name. Place each transition set between the corresponding anagrams. Next, make all the anagram layers invisible except the two whose transition you're working on. Fade the layer you're transitioning to by reducing the opacity to say, 30%. You will repeat this each time you begin a new transition.

7. Now you start working on the transitions. Take your letter layers and arrange them into the first anagram layer you're transitioning from. Flip between the two layers you're transitioning between and think about how you're going to move each letter into its new place; make sure nothing takes too long, transitions look funny if all the letters finish before one. Then take each letter in its layer and move it a little bit along the path you want it to take, making sure no letters overlap. I suggest, for the first transition layer, to only move the letter 1 pixel; this makes the animation look smoother later. Duplicate the layers and merge the originals. You now have the visible transition-from layer, the first transition step layer above that, the duplicated letter layers above that, and the faded transition-to layer above that. Now make the transition-from layer invisible; the only unfaded layers are the step 1 layer and the letter layers, in the exact same positions. Take the letter layers and move each one further along its path, taking care none overlap. After the first step of each transition, you can move each letter at most 5 pixels in any direction and still have it look ok, for a smoother but longer transition do at most 4. Again, duplicate the letter layers and merge the originals. Make the step before the one you just created invisible. Repeat until the transition is finished. If you mess up a transition layer but have already merged it, you can select the letter with the marquee, and then move those pixels within the layer using the pointer. Click outside the selection with the marquee to complete the move. When a letter has done most of its journey, check it against the faded transition-to layer and make sure it ends up in the exact right position. I suggest aiming for 10-15 transition steps; more than 15 is a little slow, fewer than 10 is a little fast. When you've got all the steps done, move them into the transition set folder. Then repeat this entire mess for each transition until you've finally got all the transition layers in the proper order between their anagrams. Duplicate the layer with your name and put it at the end, after the last transition. Congrats, you're almost done.

8. You've got all your transition layers now, from your name all the way through each anagram and back to your name. It's time to animate it. Bring up the Animation Palette from the Window menu. If it has any frames on it, click on the small arrow button at the upper right of the window and select all the frames. Hit the trash can button on the bottom to delete them. Then go to the upper right button again and select Make Frames From Layers. Voila, you now have a frame for every layer. Go through the frames and delete the ones you don't need (backups at the start of the frames, extra letter layers at the end– any layer which should not be part of the animation. Make sure you don't have duplicates of anything except the name layer (one at start, one at end). At the bottom of the palette window, set your animation to repeat forever (might as well). Now you've got to set the delay for each frame. The start frame (w/ name) I set for 4 seconds– this is supposed to be a signature of your name, after all. Then for each anagram frame and the last name frame (the last name frame is there so that once the animation is seen, the name gets a longer time visible) I set the delay as 2 seconds– enough to see it clearly. After that, for each transition's first step I set the delay to 0.2 seconds. This slightly longer delay, along with the smaller movement, makes the change from stillness to movement easier to adjust to; otherwise the animation seems to jump, not flow, into action– not what you want for this. Last but not least, I then selected all of the frames not already adjusted to something (all the later transition frames) and set them to 0.1 seconds. I found that 0.2 seconds was too long for those– the movement seemed too slow– and 0 seconds (it's obviously not 0 in the real thing, but close) seemed too fast to appreciate how the letters move. Naturally all the timings are up to you, these are just what I set. You can see what the timings really look like by hitting the preview button on the tool palette– it has an icon of the selected preview browser.

9. Now you've got all your timings set right, it's time to actually create the animation file– a GIF. Even if you have 80 layers, an animated gif is actually still a pretty small file, it should be smaller than your ImageReady document. My ImageReady doc was 992kb, the gif was a mere 56. To create your gif, simply go up under File to Save Optimized As... And save it with the name you want. You now have your gif; you can open it in a web browser and everything. You are essentially done.

10. (Just to make it ten steps, ten is such a nice, round number) Since currently Uploadit does not host gifs (or at least not unless you paid for an account unlike me, a cheapo) and Geocities doesn't let you link to anything at all, I had to find a good image hosting site. I did, and it's a good one, hosting jpegs, jpgs, gifs, and pngs up to 850kb, very straightforward to use. Host your gifs at ImageShack . Just copy the url from the bottom box and you've got your signature ready to go. Post it and show us!