IR Gif Question

I have a 34kb animated gif
and a 113kb jpg backround that I want to place behind the image.

I expand the gif's canvas to fit the jpg backround, make a new layer for the backround, match layers across the frames, and save as a optimized gif.

When I expand the gif's canvas to fit the backround, the size increases enormously! As if IR is reading the canvas size as some invisible space full of information.
The finished product, that I have optimized as much as I can without losing too much image quality... is 1.7mb.


I have tried to reverse the process as the problem seems to be expanding the gif's canvas....ie...to add a new layer to the backround and add the gif frame by frame, yet when i paste the gif, that one frame of the animation is pasted throughout the animation sequence (i.e across the new animation pages I have created in the animation window)

Is this normal? Should a 34kb gif added to a 113kb backround total 1.79mb?

Here is a link to the animated file: Animated File
Here is a link to the backround: Backround
And finally a link to the Finished Product: Finished

I think the reason your final image is so large is because it contanis a lot of detail.
Gif isn't so good when it comes to High-quality images like photos and such.
And the leaf background is an image with a lot of detail and colours so naturaly the gif is going to be huge.

JPG is a lot better for such images but obviously isn't animated.

However that's just my guess as to why the file is so large.

BTW, just for fun save a copy of the leaf background as a JPG, then make a copy of it but this time save it in GIF.
Now compare the file sizes. You'll be amazed.