A good way to learn how to GANI is by going to the following site. I highly recommend that those interested check out this site. It's simple and easy, and should be interesting enough for even you lazy folks!
http://www.freewebs.com/exodusgraal/ExodusLinks.html
As for the Hand Sprite, you either have to make a seperate image of just a hand sprite, OR, when adding images in your GANI shop you have to add it in with the correct dimensions so that only the hand is showing. You can always cut images into peices rather than adding them as a whole.