I'm working on some new code for Arduino and Linux which allows fast, complex animated sequences to fit on AVR MCUs and more capable machines. I've created a tool which takes animated GIF files and re-compresses them into a simpler format that is easy to run on simple microcontrollers. The player code doesn't need any RAM and can drive I2C SSD1306 displays faster than their theoretical max framerate. Blog post here:
Linux + Arduino code to be shared shortly (I'm documenting and it cleaning it up).