I use Photoshop 7, get a screenshot of your character and magnify to 1600% this will enable you to crop pixel by pixel...
Then add different layers of text...
Then Switch To ImageReady, in the animation bar choose a diff text layer for each one, then tween each one, I usually do 10 frames on 0-SEC for the fading, and then pause on each text for about 2 sec... this is basically how I make mine...
Also, I experiment and create new backgrounds, I have a bunch of awesome backgrounds I've made by just fooling around with different effects