If you reached the limits of your artistic capabilities with crude flipbooks in your high school textbooks, but dream of being an animator, the Qumarion will make up for at least a little lack of talent.


It's essentially an electronically-enhanced version of those wooden mannequins that artists often use to sketch the human form. Except that it connects to a computer, and animation software, allowing you to pose a 3D human model on screen by simply posing the Qumarion mannequin. With 16 joints and 32 sensors you can recreate almost any position, and since the whole system runs at 120fps, adjustments made to the mannequin are translated to the 3D model in real time.

All you need to do is set all of the target poses, like say sitting and then standing, and the animation software should automatically generate the 'tween' or in-between frames, creating the motions between positions. Who says money—specifically $850—can't buy talent? [Qumarion via DigInfo TV via Cnet]