Sorry Steven, not what you wanted to hear but I'm going to recommend Motion (part of final cut studio), of course it's only on the Mac.

i believe adobe after effects is similar to motion

no prob swift, someday i'll learn mac!
i'll check out after effects too, but all those adobe programs get pretty complicated.

yeah exactly. this is why almost everybody i know using after effects has moved or is moving to motion :-)

i have after effects. i've used it. it didn't really strike me as an application suited well to CREATING content like he's looking for. its a pretty cool app for doing cool stuff with content that you already have. but as far as generating content from thin air, it doesn't approach motion 3.

steven, if you're going to use after effects then i would recommend creating your content with photoshop and illustrator and making it pop in after effects.

thanks swift. i'm very familiar with illustrator and i think i have after effects on the work computer, gotta check it out. i'm not looking forward to learning a new program though. oh well, i'll let you know how it goes

first problem with these apps is you HAVE to read a book or watch a dvd or something. i see a lot of cats think they can just launch the app and wing it, figure it out on the fly. not gonna happen.

have a look at www.zaxwerks.com

look at this tutorial on youtube.
Watchyoutube.com

Here is a basic one i put together

Watchwww.youtube.com

i'll second that nomination... ProAnimator is nice and simple

how about macromedia flash for animation??? wouldnt that work well?

sure. flash would work. it's a program optimized for web though.

I heard Google SketchUp is really easy to use and they have video tutorials online. Might be worth a shot.