macromedia flash is the photoshop of flash programs. expensive, but full-featured. i've used the trial version before and it's very nice. the learning curve is a bit steep, like photoshop, but once you get the basics down, it's pretty cool. that's what i used for my 'marilyn' flash. i believe it also comes in a 'studio' version, which has even more tools and apps, but, like photoshop's packaged studio version, you're gonna pay more.

there are other, cheaper programs out there. a google search shld find you a number of them. and you can try places like zdnet or download.com or tucows and search these download sites and find others as well, but macromedia is the clear leader in this field.

and just to make this point even clearer, animation studios have found that macromedia flash can replace other commericial animation programs for making full length cartoons and the like. the main reason for this is, that macromedia flash works with objects and animates the entire object as one thing and can, therefore, take an arm and move it around without having to redraw it in each frame. this saves tons of time in animation. i dont know all the details of this, as i only saw a small segment reviewing this on 'the screensavers', but it looked pretty cool.

K.