Hey sact, thanks for the advice.
I tried the add.to.pic command, which works nicely for showing the image, but unfortunately I don't think it's what i'm looking for. It seems to permanently replace the room until it's reloaded again, whereas I only want the picture to be shown briefly (as in, show the picture, display a few messages, then get rid of the picture again).
I tried going back to multiple animated objects, this time using the ignore commands. The results were much more predictable, but unfortunately the game the game stopped after the second object, throwing up a message saying "No memory. Want 260, have 225." Just so you know, when i'm trying this method I have the picture split into four blocks, each one 80x84 in size. I guess it's too much for AGI to handle?