creating an animated image with text on each frame

[anthony]

You are not handling parenthesis correctly.

The parenthesis should first load or clone the image you want to modify, then modify it. Think of them as a almost completely seperate 'convert' command.

You should also look at the example in IM Examples, for Frame by Frame modification of a GIF animation...
http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/graph ... #frame_mod

Here a pre-existing animation is modified by extracting each frame, changing it, then returning it into its correct place.

If creating the animation at the same time do it this way...

convert ( setings image1 modify \) \
( setings image2 modify \) \
.... \
final settings, save_image

For example see see the Moving Hole Animation
http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/graph ... sics/#hole

Note that the first frame is temporary and is deleted when all the other frames have been generated.