Loading Sprites

[ccaveman]

I am making a space invaders game to get me going with the basics of Java gaming, but I can't load the sprites or any images for that matter(The main ship and bullets are just polygons and ovals). If anyone could tell me how to load sprites from .gif files, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Like where to put the image files or something like that. Anything just so it would show up on the screen.