Complex multimedia WordPress plugin requested

I’m slowly working on a website for myself, using WordPress as a CMS. This normally wouldn’t be a difficult thing at all, but I’m trying to do some complex things with it.

The site will be split into three sections: the blog itself, a works page (a gallery of my art, Flash stuff, websites, etc), and a “lab” section. Each one has different requirements.

The blog is standard WordPress stuff, and I don’t need help with that.

The works page, however, is more complex. I want to have it take images from one of my Flickr photosets, and create thumbnails that use a LightBox modification called LightWindow to display them. This would be automated, and I actually have this code already working on my current website. However, I also need to be able to upload Flash animations, websites, and other images and media and have it also display with thumbnails and LightWindow.

The “lab” section would essentially be a page that looks at a directory on the server, and pulls out the names of files and folders within it, along with a date they were uploaded.

Now, none of this would be difficult, except for two main things. First, I need all of this to be administrated from the WordPress dashboard. This means I can upload images/Flash/sites and whatnot directly from there and have it appear with manually entered descriptions and meta information in the works section. I also want to be able to select the directory for the lab to pull stuff from.

Second, the three sections would all be tied together with a navbar at the bottom. I know how I want it to look and even how to visually code it, but I don’t know how to get it to automatically update. I want images to act as the links to the different sections, so there’d need to be a way for me to upload images from the dashboard to use for the links.

I realize this is rather complex. If anyone is willing to take me up on it, or even just point me in the right direction or give me some hints, I’d be grateful.