Well, Ive never used pivot or easytoon, I started with Flash and I still use that.Now Im getting into 3d, using Maya.But I'd really recommend you to start slowly, I guess you should get pivot, its a great start, you dont have to deal with complex scenes, just put there one stick and let it move from one side to another, just get the basic idea of animation, google stuff about "12 animation principles" read some books and then if your pivot animations look good then you should move to Flash, well, since easytoon is kind of Black&white brother of flash I guess you should go for the colors and "get" Flash.You can do EVERYTHING in it.You can do games, menus, buttons, banners, headers, intros, animated stories, business plans, just EVERYTHING.Its the best software ever made for 2d computer animation.
Since when I was starting with animation I didnt have any mentor and we didnt have internet it was kinda hard to figure out why my animations look crappy, there was no one in my town that was into animations so I kept struggling and struggling, but I always wanted to be good so I sticked with animation and yeah, I got quite better, tried out a few styles and then when we got the Internet (4 years back, yeah :D:D) the real improvement started, after a few days searching on google (I was like "what a great feature") I found Stickpage, Newgrounds and a few czech (my country) sites, but I didnt really like them, because guys on foreign forums were so much better, so much helpful, so thats the time when I started to learn English, because so far I knew just a few words "animashiun, I am Tawnik, Hallo, Englush" so yeah, Ive joined stickpage, at first I was just submitting my crappy animations to the portal and I time to time I get some comments, not really helpful and I was kinda sad, then, one say someone gave me link to this awesome forum that means A LOT in my life.I stayed here.I was joining a lot of competitions, a lot of collaborations, I made a lot of friends here, some left some stayed :) and so I got really better, since the crappy stickmen started to look like crappy humans I was very pleased and very excited about animation again, I worked harder and harder and I finished my first fullbody project that I like

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/484519

I was expecting much higher rating so I was kind of sad, but people cheered me up and I kept animating again, Ive joined the TLFTLFLTL competition in 2008 (I guess) and I won ! That competition totally cheered me up, I was really excited about animation, in this year of TLFLTLF there were only people from this site (mostly) but the next year TLFTL 2009 there were a lot of people from other forums, such as Shiftlimits and Fluidanims.I won the 3rd place and yeah, this competition was another GREAT thing in my entire life because the subjects were really good and I liked to animate them.Then, 10 months ago (+/-) I started doing 3d
http://www.youtube.com/user/T4wnik#p/u/21/TgXcGkNJhOg

yeah, those animations sucked really bad, I was struggling and no one could help me in any way till one guy was really harsh at me, it was on one czech forum related to 3d modeling, animation etc. And he told me to PLAN THE THINGS and yeah it helped ! Look how much better I got after that 10 months (thats my entry for this months www.11secondclub.com competition, Im still working on it, the lip synch, facial expressions, etc arent done yet)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJKvvbOlwQ

I stopped working on this one for a while because of my Christmas 2d project, I worked on it for 5 days and I was really surprised how it turnout out
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/521787

But yeah, again, Im quite disappointed by the score, I know, it might seem selfish but when I finally made it I didnt think it was worth 3.70
Well, thats the life, if the score is low I have to make better animations, right ? And I totally forgot about my long time 2d project "The revenge of Anthony Diaz" its mafia-related short (3 minutes +/-).Im working on it for 3 months (I guess) but I stopped (as usual) because of the 3d animations, but I guess I will have to start working on it again, because I want to show Newgrounders something I they will have to LOVE !

And yeah, thats my animation career, hope that helped you ;)
Sorry for my BAD English.