Animated sprites dont work on panels... (Someone correct me if Iam wrong)
I would assume you could create a animated View-Entity sprite, the place it's layer 1 higher then the panel and then place it's pos_x/y to be in the correct screen spot..
As it is a sprite simple changing it's frame by time_step*a_speed should animate it
my.frame +=2*time_step;
Just some ideas to play with