Paint Shop Pro 6 was decent for pixeling yes, and it came bundled with Animation Shop 3, which was pretty good (though it had some dumb dirty compression for animations that kept coming up on mine, even if I turned it off). I just started using GG because it was easier and bundled the functions in one program (and animation previews of course).
And yeah, I agree with Helm, even if you do find a way to get PhotoShop set up correctly, it's too much hassle. Anyway, even if you get all that stuff right, how are PhotoShop's animation skills? I've seen the tools are there, but I never used those...