OK, I'm a newbie and I'll make this quick:
When I'm animating, I find that, using Loc first, then moving my object a few frames later leads to unexpected results. Example:
(A hammer pounding a nail into a block of wood, real exciting, eh?)
I can animate the hammer fine with Rot, but as I move the nail down, in one case, after Loc-ing it, when I animated it it started moving in a curious oval pattern at an angle to my perspective (side view). At times, the nail will start rotating in place, wreaking havoc with the steady view I am trying to create. Any suggestions on what I am doing wrong, or what I could do to fix it??? All I am doing is loc-ing the nail in frame 42, going ahead to frame 44, moving the nail down a 1/4 inch and loc-ing it. NEED HELP! Nothing I've read covers this, I use v2.25.

Such specific modelling and animation questions are best posted and answered in http://www.elysiun.com/forum/index.php

Thanks. Sorry about that, there are so many forums and I've been trying to join on ElYsian for a while--just figured it out! Thanks again...