If you haven't checked out the September drop of the Atlas Control Toolkit (Soon to be renamed ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit), you should.   One of the coolest new features is the AnimationExtender, which lets you declaratively animate controls.  Just a few lines of markup buys you cross-browser scripted animation.  Obviously, great potential for abuse and breaking site accessibility, but used sparingly could add some nice effects to your site.

http://atlas.asp.net/atlastoolkit/

Need a lightweight paint program?  Paint.NET is a full-featured, fast and free one written in C#.  It hits that sweet spot that Jasc Paint Shop Pro used to: not so bulky that it's overkill for a quick web graphic, but not so feature-limited that you may as well use MS Paint.

http://www.getpaint.net/