If you do use Animation in your apps, here is a free library that allows you to use animations from a single image where the frames are laid out horizontally. You can also use this for other things like displaying an alternative image for various stages. The images need to be laid out horizontally as
Frame1 | Frame2 | Frame3 | Frame4 | ...
and you can set the animation to paused (so that it does not keep animating) and then change the image by setting the frame manually.
More details can be found at
http://ozapps.github.com/AnimationLib/