My POTCO Hints Project

[Dr. Zeppers]

If you were to do it the way Id indicated.

Start with each frame being a full screen.
Do not crop out just the saying for each screen and put them together from your cropped images, because these are going to vary insize and cause the problem with the blue edges, etc.
After you have all the frames you want (full sized screens), THEN crop the animation (not the bits and pieces of the animation), to accomodate the necessary size to accomodate all the various hints.

This would keep the text size consistent, the background size consistent, the readability consistent, and you would never have any blue bars because all the frames are the same size, this is how I created the Dueces avatars, and a few other animations I have done (see my TTC avie and profile image) although the frames in that case came from a video capture. But the idea is the same, animate full frame, crop the animation. Do not crop frames, THEN put together the animation.