[stomachmonkey]

There are so many ways to tackle this it's not funny.

The correct way is to start with a good video editing suite, either Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut or Avid. None cheap. Sony Vegas can work and is cheaper.

Next for effects and transitions you need Adobe After Effects or Apples Motion. There are others like Boris.

But you still need to create content so now you are looking at needing an image editor, Photochop or The Gimp and a vector editor, Adobe Illustrator.

For some of the higher end objects a 3d modeler, 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4d, Blender.

To do things quickly you'll also want a library of textures, particles and background templates commonly referred to as jump backs.

In your reference video I see a mix of stock elements/effects/transitions and one off custom stuff.

Depending on the complexity of what needs to be rendered a high end machine with additional dedicated cards to offload processing from the CPU. This is an area where you simply can't spend too much money, or put another way you can go broke building it.

I've got a couple of high end machines, 8 cores/16 gb's of ram/10 TB raid 5 and sometimes they just don't cut it. Between the software and hardware they are North of $15k to build.

The old adage cheap, fast or good, pick 2, applies here.

And even if you have all of that the final product comes down to the talent/creativity of the operator.

Good creative is not a product of technology, it's a product of people with good aesthetic sense.