Platform game

Hey, for my graphic design project i am toying with the idea of making an '8- bit' style platformer. I am very capable of the illustration side of the game, i think ive got the animation down too, but my actionscript is very limited.
i was wondering how easy actionscript is to learn, as i have quite a long timeframe to complete the project (roughly 8 months) but i would prefer to get the game completed by september.
Also, i would consider hiring someone to code the game for me, pending on the price of course... Is there any way someone could give me a rough estimate on how much this might cost, in £.
Thanks in advance, Joe

How long is a piece of string?

Yeah, sorry, i just realised that was a pretty vague question.
I've read a few tutorials, and have a basic idea of how im gonna get the character to move, jump, etc. how im gonna make the platforms, a little bit about weapons, and some very basic AI 'baddies'.
If anyone knew of any more advanced tutorials that would be greatly appreciated, or if anyone has any open source platformers i could take a look at, that would be awesome.
Thanks again, Joe

This should remove some of the pain of developing a platformer,

http://flixel.org/

Keep in mind though that learning any coding language has a fairly steep learning curve, and a platformer isn't the easiest place to start ( Level design alone is a mare ).

Squize.