Boot and Shutdown animations?

I've seen this done, but it's not as straightforward as just inserting an image file in the fs or boot image. My understanding is that it's somewhat risky to modify on an existing device.

At the very least, a shut-down graphic would help immensely as it is currently impossible to tell if the device is still busy shutting down, or has completed shutting down.

@Toby Kurien: As a workaround the notification led (if your device has one) could be turned on using an upstart script.
I did this for my Nexus 4 and it works quite well. However, I do not guarantee that this won't break anything (I'm quite sure that nothing could happen, but I just want to be sure that nobody can accuse me of messing something up).

I have put the following (without the quotes) in a file called "pwoffled.conf" in /etc/init/ :
"start on runlevel [016]
stop on runlevel [2345]

script
 echo 255 > /sys/class/leds/blue/brightness
end script"

This should turn on the blue indicator led when the phone is shut down. I am not sure if this is the correct way of doing this, but it works on my phone.

If you do not have the Nexus 4 but have a device with a notification led it should be possible to use this script with minimal changes.