Is this for tablets or for smartphones? Android 3.0 introduced a whole new animation capability, and also makes it easy to do animations with fragments. But of course this isn't available on the older phones. Bill's suggestion of ViewFlipper is a good one. There's sample code in this stackoverflow post:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3928488/how-can-i-create-a-sliding-layout-like-the-main-android-menu
I haven't tried this personally so I can't vouch for it. You have some other options. The Home screen of Android is itself an application, and is actually available as a sample app on the Android Developer's site:
http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/Home/index.html
This is rather old code however but may help you understand how to do what you want to do. The other place to look for existing source code is within the Android source itself. This is a treasure trove of useful information, as we've often dug into it to figure out how something works.
As to your second question, I'm not sure I understand. What's a crystal gloss look? Are you talking about image manipulation? Or how images are arranged in the layout?
- dave