This is year was our second animation, and 2046 has seen three seasons counting this one. I only joined animation this year and quickly became the most knowledgable person on 3DS Max. However, this was not very hard and I'd still consider myself a rookie. After March is done and I'm in my between-quarter break (I'm taking classes through the local community college), I'll be able to focus more on learning the software. I failed to point out that I'm still in high school, so I apologize for any confusion.
We've got a bit of a project going with a new animated character that we can pull out for an animations requiring a humanoid figure, like the safety animation. I'll come up with some interesting ideas for the current animators to do to keep their game up. As far as new kids go, I don't really know how to make something like learning the interface anymore fun than it really is.
I like the idea of the 2D shapes animating. Was that just a couple splines with modifiers and such?