It's best to just draw things and mess around to get the hang of the various tools, but if you want to start animating things i suggest a tutorial site like www.flashcartoons.org for basic stuffs.
(Scrambled Eddwww.eddsworld.co.uk,
Sun 9 Nov 2008, 12:05,
archived)
Really i just want to know how to optimize pictures and animations.
And obviously how to make them, i'm really struggling with keyframe animations, i don't really understand the concept.