So I landed this contract for next week, and while bosslady is aware that I’ve never made a screensaver before, she also expects me to figure out how to. 
So where do I start? Is there specific software I need? Articles online somewhere I can read? etc.
thx.
Is the screen saver for Windows? CodeProject is a great Windows programming site complete with how-to articles and free, sample source code.
If you go to the site and enter “Screen Saver” in the search function, it will find a lot of good articles. This article is the most popular hit. For the most part, you should be able to find a sample screen saver that is similar to yours. Then you can just modify it.
Also, you can checkout Microsoft’s MSDN (either online or on CD). There is a how-to article in there too.
Good luck!
Hrm…
Well, I"m not a programmer, I’m a designer… is there any sort of software app which will write the back-end stuff if I WYSIWYG the front end? Sort of like Flash, say?
Depending on what exactly the screensaver is supposed to do, you will need some programming (unless it’s just a slide show type thing in which case there was a thread about that just recently here somewhere…). It’s really not hard to write a screensaver, and if it is for Windows, VB6 is probably the easiest and most WYSIWYG option. One of its biggest drawbacks though is speed so if the application is too intensive (arrays and floating point math especially) it might be too slow.
Basically what you need to make a screensaver is to make a borderless window that takes up the whole screen, does your graphics, and exits upon keypress or mouse move. Disabling the system screensaver on startup and reenabling it upon exit is also a good idea. I did up a little VB6 template for my own use; that might work for you.
If you’re a designer, not a programmer, maybe you don’t need a program at all.
There are already shareware programs out there that’ll do a variety of generated animations or present a slide show using graphics of your choice with all sorts of fade effects. All you need to do is locate a suitable program, install it , provide the graphics files and set the configuration settings.
That tactic may not fill your bill, but it’s another avenue to look at. No, I don’t have a cite; Googling to find shareware catalogs isn’t hard though.
You know how to make flash anims, you could make a flash anim and then use one of the numerous possible ways to convert it to an executable file (google helps).
Then just change the file file extension to .scr and dump it in the c:\windows dir when needed. 
I’ve not toyed with flash authoring tools too much but I’d assume that it’s not too difficult to make the anim exit when user moves the mouse.