Need some hints on how to do this effect in Apple Motion

(Cross-posted to the Motion forum as well)

I have an idea for an fx shot in a blood donation spot that involves a red line that starts at one side of the screen, from say a small red box, screen right over white limbo, and draws across in a serpentine sort of way, branching off to terminate into numerous, let's say simple square boxes. screen left. See, I can't show needles going into arms, but I want to create a visual of the plastic tubing carrying the donated blood to multiple recipients.

What I don't have are 3-d stroke or Illustrator to make a vector path. I can probably hack something together in Lightwave, but was hoping to do everything in FCP and Motion for this. The LW route is going to be a huge time sink and I need something to show a client today.

The 3-d stroke needn't actually be 3-d, just serpentining, kind of like following a wandering garden hose. As the red line branches off, I'll have litle red boxes on the branches fill, and maybe pop in pictures of people's faces with them, showing how one donation helps many.

Motion is not a program I'm strong in yet, so any suggestions regarding how you would execute that in Motion are welcome. Most welcome indeed before about 2PM central today:-P

Thanks.