I found the registry locations responsible for these animations, which in previous versions were referred to as "Dynamic Pen Feedback." It's all controlled by WISP, the Windows Inking Services Platform, and there is a section which enumerates WISP settings which is mirrored in these three locations across the registry:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Wisp\Pen\SysEventParameters HKUS\**\Software\Microsoft\Wisp\Pen\SysEventParameters HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Wisp\Pen\SysEventParameters
If you're new to working with the registry, and you don't know what that means, let me know and I'll make a deployable reg patch you can just double-click. No time tonight though. Anyway:
Concerning this topic, I think the only values that control the splash and other animations are
Splash and
UIFeedbackMode, which you should set to (decimal)
0. If you have UAC on it's going to give you fits, as usual, and likely one of those branches is going to tell you you don't have permission in any case, so you'll need to give yourself permission for that key.
Also interesting is how many other awful things the default WISP settings impart to pen functionality. I went through and set almost everything in those keys to 0, because on the desktop I never use handwriting input or Flicks and I sure don't need these settings confounding the rather delicate setup I impart through the Wacom
driver and some applications like Painter which add yet another level of fine tweaking to the whole process.
Take a look at the (mostly) self-explanatory value names under those keys and you might notice that things like
WaitTime and
HoldMode may also be impacting the responsiveness of your tablet pen in various applications.
Also, I've noticed that by default (under
\Wisp\MultiTouch) Windows 7 just assumes that you're using multitouch capabilities when you enable tablet functionality, which could cock things up royally for multiple-tool users.