Image caching causing problems

Question

I am making a Java based game. I'm using a mixture of static and animated gifs (things should switch to animated gifs now and then e.g. when something explodes).
I am using Tookit.getImage() to get images, e.g.
Toolkit kit;
Image image;
image =  kit.getImage("images/Explode.gif");This caching is all very well for the static gifs, but very bad for the animated ones. For a 'repeat once' gif, it'll only ever play once upon first load, in future it just starts at the end of the animation. If I have the gifs repeat forever, all instances of the gif are synchronised at the exact same point (so if something is already exploding, then another explodes, it would start mid animation).
The Toolkit API suggests createImage (because getImage implements its own caching), but with createImage, the gifs don't animate whatsoever (they just display the initial frame). Anyone got any ideas to get independant instances of animated gifs working?
Thank you

Answer 1

Use a so called "sprite sheet" instead. Thats a single image, which contains all the frames next to each other.
A sprite sheet can look like this:
http://kaioa.com/k/newexplosion7_sheet.png
(Note that this one has full alpha. Drawing it will be very slow usually.)
And here is one with bitmask transparency:
http://kaioa.com/k/dither_ex.png
For displaying the animation you simply draw a specific region of the image each frame. You can do that for example with that drawImage method, which takes 2 clipping regions (4 coord pairs).
Getting "independant instances" is a matter of using seperate counters for each explosion on screen. You can for example use some Explosion object, which holds x, y and the frame number.