Expert: Andre Hickman - 12/21/2006

Question

-------------------------------------------
The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
I am looking for an animation program for creating videos for my 15 year old. I have searched on the internet for hours but have only found really hard ones. My son wants to have the objects and body parts (so he can creat a character) already made for him so all he has to do is add voices, make them move, ect. My son doesn't care much about how good the graphics are but more on how easy it is. He wants lots of options on how people move or talk  but little animation making because he is a bad artist.

-----Answer-----
Hands down, I would say to get him POSER.  It has changed hands many times since I first bought it, when it was poser 3, by Curious Labs.   It is now at version 7, and is owned by a company called E-frontier.  It is about as easy as it gets, and is a hybrid between a novice and professional grade software, although the results can achieve a very professional look. I still use it for 3D content developement.

Using Poser is almost as easy as playing with GI Joe men...insert a character, pose him, move some frames forward in the timeline, give him a new pose....It has a built in walk creator, and plenty of poses to choose from, that are just point and click.  You can clothe your characters and there are tons of resources out there for it.  

go to www.efrontier.com to get info on it, and if you want to see what it is capable of (by real world artists) just do a google or yahoo search on "poser galleries" or "poser tutorials"

TRUST ME...START WITH POSER!!!!

Cheers,
Andre'

   Andre,
  Thank you so much for responding to my letter. I really think Poser is a easy and powerful program. I do have a couple of questions though. When I was reading about Poser I read that there are only 10 characters. Does this mean that those are the only characters you can use? Or are those just body's that you can add hair, clothes, and change there height and weight. And what happens if I want a classroom full of kids or an old grampa, a baby, or a monster? Also can you download more landscapes and props once you already have Poser? Please write back.
P.S.
    I am giving you the highest rating possible  

Answer
not only can you change hair clothes and props, but your can also "morph" the bodies...that is, add weigh, muscle mass, change nose and eye appearance, ear position shape and size, skin color, and anything else pertaining to the characters...not only that, but there are free and purchase characters that you can find on the web, but trust me, he'll have his hands full with what comes in the base software.  

You can put multiple characters in a scene and animate them all individually.  You'll have to find Poser stuff, to get more extras, but there is over a decade worth of the stuff all over the web, and a lot of it is free...just do a search on "Poser Tutorials" "Poser characters" "Props" etc...and you'll have years worth of downloadable stuff to surf through!

JUST DO IT MOMMY!!!

Cheers,
Andre'
www.andrehickman.com