All very good points indeed RorrKonn!  I do understand that there will be some drawing and learning on my part, I'm just hoping to spend the majority of my time creating rather than reading technical manuals on how to use a program. I guess there will be some of that which can't be avoided in the beginning, hopefully it becomes easier and there will be less of that as I progress. I'm a musician, so I've experienced some steep learning curves when learning to use my recording software, so I understand that some digging into the works of the programs is necessary, just hoping to minimize it as much as possible. 

Regarding Anime Studio as far as exporting stills, here's what the Smith Micro tech support rep had to say about Anime Studio Debut version....."Unless you purchase the Pro Version of Anime Studio, you can not do Still Images, since it only exports to Animations.  For Comics and Illustrations, that makes the Debut Version not such a good fit for what you are trying to do. Also, Anime Studio, unless you are satisfied with the style of the Character Wizard, it will require artistic skill to draw the figures, then Rig."

So I'm wondering why the Debut version won't export stills, that's too bad because the Pro Version is much more expensive as compared to the Debut version. There was one rather detailed and lengthy review of Anime Studio Pro 10 from an Amazon customer that got me thinking, maybe someone could shed some light on the points this guy made that frustrated him so much after his purchase, here's what he had to say..............

[["Frustratingly Cumbersome Tools and Interface. AAAARRRRGH!I really wanted to like version 10 of Anime Studio Pro. I bought this app back in the day when it was called Moho, but gave up then because of its limitations and frustrating interface. Unfortunately, years later, the latest version of the app isn’t much better. I was hoping to use Anime Studio to replace Adobe Flash, which I’ve been using over the past 10 years for cut-out style animation. Even though Flash has been used to create animation for both TV and film, Adobe still hasn’t integrated proper animation features into what is basically an interactive multimedia platform. To animate with Flash, I sort of have to trick it into doing things it's not meant to do, export my .swf files and then composite them in After Effects. Not a very effective workflow. So I decided to test out Anime Studio 10 with a small animation project and purchased it online. Well at least it's an inexpensive piece of software. Off the bat, the interface and drawing tools are absolutely arcane! For example, the familiar pencil and paint bucket icons you’ll recognize from your drawing apps behave nothing like you’d expect. There’s no bezier tool (the ubiquitous all-in-one drawing tool included in every graphics app for the past 20 years) and instead you have to click and drag the “Add Points” tool to connect points to make lines, then use the “Curvature” tool to adjust the lines, point by point. What?

Then there’s an entire set of mysterious tools with names like “Magnet”, “Delete Edge”, “Point Reduction”, “Noise”, “Stroke Exposure” which are completely foreign in design and function. It’s as if this program was written over the course of 20 years by a dozen programmers working in separate parts of the world who’d never used a computer to draw anything in their lives.

But the heart of Anime Studio is animation (right?), which is struggles to do pretty well. If you can manage to create your cut-outs in an app you’re comfortable with (Illustrator, Photoshop or Flash), with a little elbow grease you may be able to import the pieces into Anime Studio, reassemble them and rig a character with bones. Unfortunately Anime Studio will only import Illustrator 8 format, and even then my cut-out pieces were jumbled and unusable. That left me with Photoshop cut-outs, but of course that meant no vectors (for scalability); raster only. So once again I was back to viewing dozens of Anime Studio YouTube tutorials, trying to wrap my brain around the drawing tools and unusual interface.

After trying to use this program for a week, cringing and wincing and wanting to throw my iMac out the window, I finally threw in the towel instead, defeated and $150 lighter. There’s a reason why you rarely see animation of any caliber made with this program, which is a shame because if the producers took the time to redesign the drawing tools to behave like every other app out there, it could stand a chance of competing with the likes of ToonBoom and Flash. Unfortunately (again), I believe that will never happen. Sad face.]]"..........

Wow as you can see, this guy really was disappointed! I take what he said with a grain of salt though, because it's only one person's opinion, but it did get me thinking. And contrary to that, there were a few good reviews too. That all said, Anime Studio Pro 10 does seem to favor the 2D style of cartooney format I'm thinking of doing. If I go that route as an alternative to exclusively using Poser, I may end up having to get both Manga Studio 5 and Anime Studio Pro 10, but now the cost is adding up to be a little more expensive than I anticipated. Lots for me to think about before deciding to purchase anything.

Then there are the options which that customer mentioned of Flash and ToonBoom, but I know very little about either one of those.

It is helping a lot talking with everyone here, I'm learning much more about this whole process, thanks again, and welcome your thoughts on any of this.