Thanks everyone. I really appreciate the feedback.

I'm gathering from your responses that I should just dive in an engage the inevitably messy process. I have already begun to do so, but I find the chaos and uncertainty uncomfortable and was hoping to reign in the terror a bit with a little order. I realize I'll just have to work through the pain.

I created this really buggy prototype - ( http://www.davidwhall.me/tag/tag.html ) - of a small portion of my project for a usability test. And yes, funkboy, the art is still not great. That's also a work in progress. The prototype was made in Flash using AS3 and it only represents about 5% of the total project. My original intent was to make this a Web/Flash game but with things moving rapidly toward mobile, I would prefer to focus on the iPad.

The animation interface accessed under the number "3" on the main interface will form the core of the application. This step will allow users to create their own animations and save them to the server. Step 1 is to be a video tutorial on the specific principle of animation. Right now I just have a place-holder video there. Step 2 is to be a game which allows the user to practice the principle, not unlike this game which teaches typography: http://type.method.ac/
The current game there is nothing like it will be. Again, it's just a place holder and is very slow.

So I plan to have about 10 principles of animation, each with its own screen with three steps. The pages of the book will flip and each page will eventually look like a pop-up book page.

Surrounding the teaching of the 10 principles will be a social animation experiment where users will use an original animation I provide, and then re-animate the fixed sequence of shots to make their own animation, using the assets provided in the game. Assets will include voice over clips, audio sound effects, visual effects, animation cycles, background art, foreground art and props, not to mention the character rigs which are characters in my story. Some of these assets can be created and uploaded by users and some will be built into the game itself. A flagging feature will allow the community to police inappropriate content. The intended age group for the game is between 7 and 14.

Users will be able to animate complete stories in three ways:

1. go-it-alone - i.e., do it all themselves from shot 1 to shot X
2. Randomize - Create a film by clicking a button which will randomly grab numbered shots and put them in the proper sequence. These will be more humorous as the animations won't gel, but the outcomes may be surprising.
3. Build-a-team - this is where the social part comes in most. You can invite other users to create a shot after the hand off of the previous shot, creating a sort of telephone game version.

The resulting videos can be rated, reviewed and shared to social sites. The app will track game inputs and award points for completing tasks, making comments and rating other user's films.

Okay, now that you know more and have seen the crap prototype, where would you sink your teeth in first?

Thanks again.