New to photoshop and animations.

[walkerneo]

I'm pretty new to photshop and animations and I just have a couple questions to start.


First off, when tweening frames, is there any way to update the object's position between frames rather than create new ones? Before using photoshop, I used Ulead gif animator and this was one of the options. I'm assuming the reason it isn't there is because there is a better way to do this. I'm assuming I create a separate animation of the moving object and overlay it over the main animation some how? So if I have a regular gif, let's say of a pan shot over a lake and I want to put a black square moving from one end of the screen to the other, how would I do that without updating each frame individually?

Second, is there a zoom effect for animations? If I wanted to give the impression of something getting closer, how would I go about doing that? I know I could increase the size of the object in every frame, but is there another way?

Third, is there a better way to control the canvas than the canvas size? If I import a picture bigger than the canvas, can I have the canvas adjust to that image? The way I've been doing it is making the canvas bigger than the image and then cropping the image. Is there an easier way?

Finally, is there an easy way to create moving stick figures?

[walkerneo]

Also, how do I create a circle with a thick border? I can only seem to make one with a border of one pixel...

edit: nevermind, I can either have the circle filled or make it a path... question remains, how do I change the width of its border and have it not fill?