I have found I am able to animate walks, runs, jogs very convincingly "by hand." The best part about doing it that way, is your character is ready to respond to the environment around it and you are not "animating" (if you can call what you do in WD animating) in a vacume. If you pay attention to the way we move around in real life, we never just walk in a straight (or even Bezier curved) line with constant repedative movements at a constant rate. We are always slowing down, speeding up, turning corners, nodding to friends, opening doors, sidestepping on-comming traffic, etc. Whatever you get out of Walk Designer will either be of limited use or produce a very boring movie.

LifeForms, IMO, is an unneccessary and frustrating extra step. You can do everything you need to do right in Poser.

BTW, what is a full-length featurette? I think that's an oximoron.