I was thinking about making a flash presentation for a project using sprites and stuff, excepot i don’t know how to make flash stuff. Do i need a speacial program, or is there a site that gives full good explanation. or should i just do something else since it must be way to complicated for someone like me.
okay then, how do i make a huge animated .gif?
Ya don’t use it unless you know how. And ya you need a program and the real flash program isn’t cheap. If you want to make an animated gif file you could use microsoft gif animator thats what I use for animations. You can download it here I hope this is what you want. The only thing with this is that you have to make all of your pictures in a different program. I’m pretty good at using flash but it just came naturally to me.
http://www.rocketdownload.com/details/inte/4282.htm
Whoops that link didn’t work for me just in case i’ll post this one
http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/11/3/2/11-3-2-57.shtml
I taught myself enough Flash to make simple animations and cartoons and stuff in about a week (just a week or so ago, too… I’m still pondering what I should do with the cartoon I finished…). It’s hard, but it’s not impossibly tough like most of the people here are trying to get you to think.
The program you need is Macromedia Flash MX, which is hella expensive, unless you’re some sort of dirty pirate…>_>
The hardest thing about Flash is ActionScript, at least for me. If you know JavaScript, you’ll pick ActionScript up really quickly. But if you’re like me and don’t know how to code, it can get rocky pretty quickly.
Don’t be afraid of Flash, though. It can eat up a lot of time, but it’s pretty fun and rewarding too.
I bought the whole studio with flash mx professional for $100 the only downside to it is that is doesn’t have technical support but if you know what your doing on a computer then you shouldn’t need it.
Just download the MX free trial. You get 30 days, and you can redownload it if you want.
Flash isn’t hard. At all. My school has Studio (the suite flash is in), and i taught it to myself in a few days.
The only “hard” thing in flash is ActionScript. But ActionScript is simple. In fact, it was the first programming language i ever learned, though it’s so fucking simple that i don’t even think it should be called a programming language 
It is wonderfully class oriented, and once you figure out the classes, you can just browse the “reference book” (in the application) for the commands you want.
Just fucking around, (which is what it seems like you will be doing, as nothing you described requires AS) requires no skill at all. Once you learn what a keyframe is, what a tween is, and how the timeline works, you are good to go. Try a few "hello world!"s of something super simple so you get the basics down.
If it is going to be a sprite theatre in the way that you will use sprites already saved on your hard disk, i wouldn’t recommend using them in flash. Say you have a sprite saved on your hard disk as “Sprite.bmp”. You would just import this image into the flash library, then drag it onto the stage (the work area thing) and then edit it like a movie clip (you’ll see what i mean when you get the program). You don’t want to do this because you will not have good control over the clip. It will basically be a static image that cannot be edited, except for movement along an axis. Try drawing them into flash, if you are good enough at it.
If you need any help, feel free to PM/AIM me, and i’ll try my best. I’m pretty good at flash (or <i>i</i> think so at least ;P) so i can probably be of assistance. Just, like i said, throw down a few "Hello World"s so you get a feel for the program, then go nuts.
Yeah, what Dev said.
Except I sent you Studio MX. 
See I never would be able to download the mx trial because I have 56k internet and it sucks majorly
Flash MX makes Actionscript and video embedding super easy. I used it to make a couple of evites a while ago, and it was easy-peesy. They have a lot of preset scripts too… I don’t think you even have to program your own loading bars anymore.
Oh, and check THIS out if you want to see a basic Flash file using embedded video. If you have a 56K or worse, don’t even touch that link though.
Wow. That’s really good. Is that the one you did?
Mmmyep. Me and my buddy Alon took photos and edited them together in Motion (cool Mac program). Then, I made the Flash file and embedded it into HTML pages. We’re doing this stuff for The Dunes, a band which could be signed by Universal sometime soon. Unfortuantely, we’re not getting payed right now as they don’t have any money. Silly poor indy bands…
Yeah, ActionScript isn’t that hard, but I still don’t think that it’s easy.
Then again, I don’t really know ANY programming, so there you go.
Oh, and for the curious, that Flash video I mentioned earlier is linked to in my sig now… It’s a shame poor Crabby was never given a chance. He could’ve been bigger than curly fries.