New to Flash/ Want to animate

Hey, fellas. I’m a new user and I have some questions for all ya professionals.

I was wondering if Flash MX is the correct route to go if I want to essentially do animations, like actual cartoons.
Would I be better off tryin other software?

Anyways, I guess I’m wanting to go the traditional animating route except on a comp, eventhough I have no experience in it.
I been messing around in Flash and been doin some tutorials, but can’t find anything on how to actually animate characters, making them walk around and such. Is it possible to animate frame by frame in Flash?
How do I do it? Any tutorials for animating characters would be nice! Thanks guys