Quote - Sounds like it would be a cool project. I'll try to help, time and energy permitting.
I'd love to learn more about interface design.

Seriously though, considering how big of a chunk this is to chew through... why not develop a blender add on?  I don't mean, why not, as in you shoud... but what are the pros and cons of that direction? 

A couple of reasons actually - first and foremost probalby because I don't use Blender.  I find the interface confusing at best.  I realize there are a lot of people who use and like blender, but it's not really my cup of tea.

Second, I have a feeling the blender people probably wouldn't be too thrilled with that idea, first because I will not be using anything remotely like the blender interface and second because some of what I intend to do would most likely be considered "duplication" of features.

The modeler, for example, that I'd like to eventually ad, at least the first stage, is going to be designed specifically with two things in mind, modelling clothes quickly and easily as well as doing morphs for characters.

In order for these to really funciton with the simplicity I have in mind, they really need to be built into the app - Not sure that blender would be too thrilled by that since they already have modeling components of there own and that would probably get someone's knickers in a serious twist.

I'd like to do this so this project can interface with Blender, I like to give people as much portability and usability as I can, but Figure Animation Studio really needs to be a stand alone project I think.  It's going to get large enough and offer enough features that making it a plugin to another app really isn't the way to go, at least not as far as my vision of the development is concerned.

As to help, I'll take all I can get whenever its offered :)

-Never fear, RenderDog is near!  Oh wait, is that a chew toy?  Yup. ok, nevermind.. go back to fearing...