It makes me think of myspace when I see those. And that's not good.
Dude, if your just beginning just look up tutorials. It's a LOT easier then messing around with the program and figuring things out. Also, for renders sue planetrenders.net and for C4D's do a deviant art search. Fonts and dafont and brushes can vary from a wide range of sites, I'd use deviantart.
Also Photoshoproadmap.com was my favorite tutorial website. They just have links to a bunch of other tutorials.
And btw the dark, firefox 3, latest opera, and I believe IE8 can display animated png's, or .apng. Supports alpha transparency, animation, and saves the quality that a .png normally would.