thanks for the comments. after looking at the nav last night trying to figure out how I can change it, im going to just do the navigation in flash instead of AE and then bring it into flash. (with the exception of the glowing BG)
The intro took me about 8 hours to refine the concept and actually make it work. of course, now that Ive done it already, I could probably redo the entire thing in about 2 hours, maybe less. Its really not all that amazing or anything. any seasoned AE user would probably see it as amateur. Its kind of like using the filters in Adobe... Maybe a little more complicated, but not much.
Hey Paul, got to the Adobe website and download the 30 day trial of After effects. You have full use of the program and can save and export.