Well, I haven't actually done any animation in Gimp myself beyond some very basic things, because my copy keeps crashing; it seems to have an issue with the Wacom Intuos2 tablets under Windows, and I'm still looking for a stable fix. How basic of instructions are you looking for? Is there anything in particular you're looking to animate?
http://jimmac.musichall.cz/tutor.php3 might help; there's a basic and advanced tutorial for it there. If that doesn't help you, let me know what you're looking to do, and I'll either find a tutorial for it or figure out how to do it and write the tutorial myself. (=
Also, Gimp is a real image program, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I'm quite positive it's got more features than the average hobbyist/home user would ever need, just a slightly sharper learning curve.