Bondware isn't Daz, I'm sure they wouldn't do anything to deliberately annoy me, right?

But because I think they care far more about the future of Poser than Smith-Micro, I hope they'll at least consider the idea of an entry-level Poser aimed at total 3D newbies, and maybe specifically targeted for young fans of comics, manga and anime.

My friend's daughter is a huge anime/manga fan and wanted to make her own simple comic book recently, and initially I wanted to recommend Poser (or Daz, in case he didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on what could just be a passing fancy but I try to avoid helping out DazStudio since I started off myself on Poser and am biased, lol).

I couldn't do it.. both Poser and Daz are just too complicated for young people to get into unless they're already really into computer graphics and know some 3d basics. I ended up recommending Manga Studio to her instead, since she can sketch... but I wish I could've pointed her to a "Poser Comic Book Creator" or something which was cheap/free with just enough to get her excited to pose figures and do simple renders. Something fun to play with, and eventually get more serious about as she learned the tools and figured out what she wanted to achieve.

Manga Studio (now Clip Studio Paint) actually has a very simple 3d to 2d rendering system, you can load Lightwave3d and Wavefront OBJ files into multiple 3d layers, and it comes with a mannequin figure that can be posed to do exactly what Poser Debut used to do. And has lots of other 3d objects like houses, furniture, etc. that can quickly create a scene. It has a cheap version that only costs $50USD and a pro version that is a wee bit more expensive than Poser 11 ($219US, vs Poser11 which is $200US). I actually switched over to MSEX4 ages ago, and don't use Poser for much other than periodic cloth simulation, precisely because it is overall easier to use and I get decent comic book-style renders out of it. NOTE: the 3d support is only in the more costlier $219 version, but my friend would upgrade her to that from the cheap version if she really demonstrated that she'd fallen in love with the program.

The trial period on Poser11.2 is what, 21 days and then after that it is totally disabled? That's great for pro-artists to test it out, but I think teens would need much more play time with a product to fall in love with it. I kind of prefer the option of paying $50 for a more basic, but still useful version of the product without any kind of deadline so that there's no rush to fool around with it, learn it, and then decide that they want more.