First the likes... First is the ease of animation, specifially using fully rigged characters and the library of actions/performances.  While surely not an extensive list of actions and performances, the included walk cycles are a real boon.  Using the 2 other 2D animation packages (ASP (Anime Studio Pro) and TBS (ToonBoom Studio)), one of the hardest aspects of those applications is in setting up the character and creating walk cycles.  So that inclusion in CTA makes animating much easier.  And being able to link and unlink props is also something that is a great advantage, for picking up items, carrying them, throwing them, handing them to another character.  Extremely useful.

The full body photo fitting is a neat feature, but it's not nearly as versatile as using the sprite based characters.  Certainly you can take an image and create a fully animatible character with little bit of effort, but unless you're using high quality images you're taking yourself (so the positioning is correct), it's difficult to get a really good looking character.  Most of them will be frontal views, and quite frankly a frontal view character isn't nearly as intereting or as animatible as a side view character. For a JibJab style of animation, it's adequate.

The facial fitting features for photographs, specifically for creating animatible faces and heads, is top notch.  But seeing as that's based on CrazyTalk itself, I have no qualms with it, as I've always been a big fan of CrazyTalk.

The interface itself is fairly clean, and user friendly with few exceptions.  Those exception would be the image centric dialog boxes, for masking, photo fitting, facial fitting etc... They're just too small.  If they were sizable or bigger, to give me more image viewing realestate, I'd be much happier...

But there are two glaring omissions I feel are necessary to be a bit more competitive with the other two applications.  And no, they don't include drawing features.  I already have a slew of drawing programs for both vectors and bitmaps, so the lack of drawing tools inside of CTA doesn't bother me in the least. No the first glaring omission is the ability to custom create a sprite based character.  I know of many people who like to draw their characters in pieces, and not having the ability to import these individual pieces and assemble them into a working character is a fairly large missing feature.  I suppose many people will have to assemble their characters, export out as an image and then go through the full body photo fitting process, but to many, that may seem like an additional unwarranted step. 

The other glaring omission, based on the first one, is the lack of different body styles for sprite based characters.  Again, since I cannot import nor create my own sprite based characters, I'm left with what comes with CTA, and I'm not overly impressed.  All the sprite characters and body styles are thin, very skinny.  I cannot use those same body parts to create a heaveset trucker, a Santa Claus, an office worker, a waitress, etc...  Using photo fitting, I could find image likes that and try to use them, then mix them up with the sprite characters, but they just look wrong.

While it is possible to edit individual pieces of a photo fitted body in an image editor, there is no such utility for the vector based sprite characters. Regardless of how many facial combinations you can create with the hair, eyes, ears, nose, and mouths all the sprite based characters will be very similiar in build and stature.

One of my biggest concerns for this product though is that RL will also recognize the limited body styles and shapes, and will release content packs that, like the iClone content packs, will be more expensive than they should be.  Of course, with iClone, the possibility for users to create their own characters and share them will be much more limited in CTA, since again, we cannot import nor create our own sprite based characters.

For an animation application, I like it.  For a character creation system, I'm not particularly happy with the offereings.  I hope that eventually RL will give us the ability to create, from scratch, full vector sprite based characters.

Just my $0.02...