Grafikdon:

I admire your willingness to learn and tackle a big project.

Shooting and compositing blue screen/green screen is the key (no pun intended) to your success for this project.

For books on using After Effects you can't beat Chris and Trish Meyer's "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects" and its companion "After Effects in Production." Master these and you'll find work anywhere.

A good source of tutorials for compositing, lighting bluescreen, matte creation check: http://www.creativecow.net
The site is filled with great advice and excellent tutorials. One of my favorites is on Procedural Matte Creation in the AE section.

Creating the kinds of things you're describing were among my favorites when I was producing video. But my life took a different turn, I changed careers and post-production's only a hobby now.

I'm sure you're discovering that you need lots of apps to accomplish what you want: 3D graphics, 2d paint, video compositing, probably video editing, plug-ins, filters...the list goes on and on. Then, of course, there's the computer(s) to run it all.

Have fun.
Norm