First off, welcome to the world of creating for ZT2! With a lot of patience and practice you can also be making content for the game - but I warn you, nothing ever goes smoothly first, second or even tenth time around!
Really, the first place you should look is
So You Want To Be A Designer..., a thread for beginners written by Mikaboshi, one of the more prolific and talented designers here (not to say that there aren't many other fantastic designers! :laughing:) As you can see, it is best to start with something simple like a varient skin before launching fully into making animals.
Of course, many people will point you towards
APE II, a tutorial written to help people make animals for ZT2, but there are some problems as I will address later. Futhermore, there are
many other tutorials available for many aspects of ZT2 editing, such as varients, paths, and fences. These should help you on your way, and are useful sources of information!
If you do decide to start jumping into animal making (which is not the easiest first task ;P), then two stickied threads by Mikaboshi will help you when the APE II tutorial is not enough:
Mika's Animal Attribute Changing thread which will help you find where you need to change biome, size, offspring numbers, fame level, cost and more options within the animal files. Additionally, Mikaboshi's
Common Problems thread may also help troubleshoot some problems with creating animals (and some other content) without the need to post for help on the forums.
Finally, for more indepth help with editing, I'd recommend going to the
ZT2 Designing Center, an affliated board of Zoo Admin soley devoted to creating user content for the game with many friendly people who will help you out.
I think that covers most things!