How do you place gif as icons without losing color quality?

[Grevous85]

Context:
I currently use paint to make my sprites and microsoft gif animator to make some gifs. all my sprite sheets currently have png icons, with the exception of one, a custom from Among Us.
As I wander through the immense world of The spriters resource, I see that some sprite sheets have animated icons, with a detail that impressed me, the quality of the color has not diminished . An example of this is a sprite sheet of Pile Man in the Mega Man custom, the animation in that icon is not simple at all, it looks like a gif, but the color is intact.
Hence my doubt arose, I do not think they use the same application as me, obviously. So it would not be bad for someone to explain to me how they do that .

[Grevous85]

The main reason I asked this is that these days I've been making some new icons for my mega man DOS robot master sprites. I tried to upload some gif files, but they were not accepted due to the poor color quality. Here is an example of one of those gifs (right) and the real colors (left).

       

[DogToon64]

You can try using a tool like Piskel, or Aseprite. I use Piskel (and most of the time, I use GIMP at the same time) to make my animated thumbnails.

(I'd recommend trying out Piskel first, since it's free.)

[Grevous85]

You can try using a tool like Piskel, or Aseprite. I use Piskel (and most of the time, I use GIMP at the same time) to make my animated thumbnails.

(I'd recommend trying out Piskel first, since it's free.)

ok, thank you very much for the recommendations, I will try them to see which one I prefer.

[Grevous85]

And in the end I declined for ... none of the above, hehe. In the end I found a way to keep the color palette clean without having to use another more complex program (for me).
I had not realized that in the microsoft gif animator program there was an option that says "import dither method", if here I change the value from "random" to "solid" it stops showing dots of another color in the gif.
   
  If I add the use of the "optimal palette" to the above, the gif will no longer have that defect, although it does not have the same colors, but the color difference is practically imperceptible. Here is an example with the NES palette.
   
DogToon64, I appreciate that you helped me, but I found a good solution according to my abilities, thank you.