PuppetTime Inc. recently announced that it has released version 1.0 of its

PuppetTime Producer software, an easy to use 3D character animation program

that the company claims makes "the TV-watching generation, the TV-making

generation." PuppetTime Producer is not a character animation package for

animators, but a package for non-animators which allows them to create

'movies' quickly and easily without any knowledge of animation technique at

all. Users can create 3D animation in minutes simply by selecting

characters, typing dialogue, recording sounds and voice-overs, and choosing

actions. The finished animation can then be saved as a QUICKTIME file,

rendered to video tape, or it can be used to create an animated storyboard

(animatic). Packages that adopt this approach are rarely useful or even

interesting to animators, but to younger students it will no doubt be a

huge hit -- giving them instant results without months of hard work. And if

it sparks up interest in animation amongst the younger generation, surely

that can't be a bad thing.