[ryanac]

If you want to do cartoon animation, look into ToonBoom. If you want to make games, you don't need to buy Flash, look into FlashDevelop and some AS3 game frameworks, etc.

This is coming from a guy who's been using Flash for years and every day at work. Adobe is really mishandling a lot of things at this point and in my mind the future of Flash is questionable at best.

Thankfully there are better options for what you're looking to do. :)

[dclowd9901]

I'd go a step further and recommend looking into HTML5/Canvas and the frameworks that are starting to go up for that platform.

[wtracy]

I just realized that Haxe might fit the bill, with support for both Flash and HTML5: http://haxe.org/