Macromedia Flash MX

Whoa Gabe. Aside from being able to tell you that it's a vector-based animation software. It's a very versatile tool, and it's now very widely used, there isn't enough space on this forum to answer that question.
If you're familiar with the process of animation, you'll pick up on it pretty fast, but the annoying part of the learning curve are the "little" doohickeys that seem to get in your way, and keep you from progressing, when infact, you just forgot to press a little button. But that's all a matter of a few weeks of studying and getting comfortable with the software.

BUT, you can import hand-drawn images and vectorize and colour them (although a heavier way of doing it), you can draw straight in flash with the pen tool, you can colour and add gradients to your work (although gradients can get heavy), you can use flash tools to do simple tweening tasks and save you alot of work, or do it straight frame by frame if that's what you preffer. You can add, and do simple editing tasks to your sound files, sound effects etc.., and most any other element needed to put an animated film together. It's good for traditional animation (to a limited degree), and for more web-based animation. You can also learn to program your flash films to be interactive with the viewer, although my knowledge of that's very limited.

A good place to start, is going to the bookstore and picking up a copy of "flash MX for dummies". It's very straight forward, and it gives most of what you need to know to get going with your film. The learning curve ain't so bad, so you'll most likely be able to get working with it pretty quickly. If you're really dedicated, you can pick it up amateurly in a matter of days. Extra techniques and tricks come with time and experience.

Adam

i use flash to do a lot of different type of stuff.. but , as an animatorm, i love just playing aroudn and doing hand drawn animations with it

i could send some links to you if you want
P.