How to program an animated background application in C#

Question

I would like to start a Summer Project just for the sake of improving my programming skills. For this I thought it would be nice if I can program an application that will run an animated image or something similar on a windows machine as wallpaper.

For instance I would like to replace the entire screen resolution with some random colored squares that will individually change color at specific intervals. However I just realized that I have no clue on how or were to start from and all the programming I have done in my first two years of study are useless for this particular task.

Could someone put me on the right direction on how to go about. I would like to do some reading but I have now clue what would help me achieve this.

To keep it clearer WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW before I embark on this this project?

Regards.