The following are some of the main features of Image for Silverlight that you may find useful:    

• Support for Animated GIF Files
  Image enables you to add animated GIF files to your Silverlight applications. The C1Image control can be used to add GIF images at design time (the regular image control only supports PNG and JPEG formats).
• Play, Pause, and Stop Methods
  The image source used with the C1Image control is the C1GifImage class, which provides media player-like commands and allows you to control the GIF animations programmatically. You can use these methods to animate GIFs while performing a task, creating interesting progress indicators, or simply better integrating the animations with the state of the application.