Flash and animation for newbies?

[OneGrassRoot]

Perhaps this is something I shouldn't even be considering, but since I successfully created a video in Windows Movie Maker (yay me...lol), I thought perhaps I could tackle a very straightforward project. Then again, it's usually the things that seem the most basic that require tons of knowledge.

Let's say I want to animate a specific jigsaw puzzle piece I've created and saved as a vector image. Just this one piece and have it move and perhaps add a voice...making it an animated character.

Is there any program you can recommend which doesn't require intense graphics skill (heck, as little skill as possible, actually), programming or any other skill, and doesn't cost a fortune?

[DaveJ]

1. It's been awhile since I used Flash...

I'm not too knowledgeable about about today's Flash, but I used it a little bit about 7 years. Since then it's evolved into a very complicated development environment, IMO. I'd just assume use MS's free Visual C# Express to create anything resembling a small application. It's not as hard as one might think.

If you are talking about animating one vector image, an animated Gif might also work. And, I think some application that create Gifs and other graphic types might have the option to export them as Flash movies. And, I also noticed something called SWFTools which converts other formats to Flash files (SWFs) here http://www.swftools.org. Never used it though, but it looks free.

[OneGrassRoot]

2. Thank you very much......

I'll look into those things. Much appreciated. :)

[DaveJ]

3. No problem... note my typo though...

You probably didn't notice this, but I meant to say I used Flash "7 years ago", not "7 years." I only did a few projects and animations. Good luck with whatever you decide!