I'll be taking a class in American Sign Language starting in a week or so. I was immediately inspired to see about illustrating Sign Language with Poser. Poser apparently has a sign language section which illustrates the letters of the alphabet. Doesn't American Sign Language have other "signs" for words, or concepts?! Does anyone know of Poser hand libraries or poses to handle such things? I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in a library of American Sign Language created with Poser? If someone is, would you recommend that such a library be created with standard P4 characters such as "Dork and Posette?!" This is likely an overly-ambitious project to consider, but I do get excited about new adventures at times.

The Sign Language Hands that come with Poser contain only finger spelling (I'm going off memory here). ASL does indeed have signs for words and concepts. I would be highly interested in a growing (I say growing because it is not a dead language and will change with time) library of ASL. If I knew more than finger spelling and a few words, I'd lend you a... hand.

Yes, I've seen this in use in our local Post Office... There is an animated Posette "talking" away in a TV screen in the corner.... British sign language is different, though. H:)

A library of ASL signs, especially if animated, would be a boon for training in ASL. ASL requires practice and observation to learn. Such a set would allow people to build libraries of ASL phrases and whole conversations for practice. Neat concept. It'd involve a LOT of work, bet well worth it. It'd certainly give someone a great deal of experience in hand posing and animation.

There is a library section in Poser4 featuring ASL for the P4 standard figures. These hand poses do not work well with the Millennium character's hands, tho. And Mike's and Vicky's hands are somewhat different as well. I recently started doing ASL finger-spelling signs for both Mill. figures.in Poser. Be a while before they are done, as a set must be done for both M and V. Send me an IM if you are interested in these hand poses. Is there very much interest in this? And, yes, there are many, many different signs for words and concepts. Some are still and most involve motion.

Well, I just couldn't resist. I set up a Python script to do finger spelling. It reads a text file and applies the letters to the chosen hand. What happens between the letters is sometimes physically impossible because I just let the interpolation happen, but the result is readable and might be useful for practice. (In freestuff under utilities.) True sign language (ASL) would be impossible to automate, because ASL uses its own idea of grammar and concepts that have nothing to do with written English. More like Chinese in its overall view of the world. But it might be possible to mechanize SEE (Signing Exact English.)

Thanks for all the wonderful responses. I'd thought of making a American Sign Language library of hand and body poses that could be shared with others. I wanted to do more than just the alphabet. With that in mind, I think it would be of most benefit to use "standard" figures such as "Dork" (P4 male) or "Posette" (P4 female). That is the general idea. Obviously it would be a major undertaking. Heck I haven't even started the class yet. The "altruistic" part of me would consider doing the project as a freebie. But then this might also be a way for me to finally "go commercial." Either way you look at it, such a project might be easier if done with a partner or partners. The question remains how this would be done. I do have access to the "Joy of Signing," (our textbook for the upcoming course), and "The Galladet Survival Guide to Signing." Decades ago, two valued friends were "Hearing Impaired," and they were the inspiration for one of my life's goals to finally learn sign language. Alas, my friends moved elsewhere. Last I'd heard they wanted to return to Galladet for some reason, perhaps to teach.

How does the idea of a first volume of ASL (including the manual alphabet) sound (or should that be feel?)? 26 letters and 62 signs. All animated poses. Like you, I have 'standardized' on Dork, but the signs should be useable with other figures if you don't mind some keyframe tweaking. It can be done ... and alone. It just requires preparation, a stringent workflow, and a set of design principles (like, all signs start and end in a standard neutral pose and only animate the arms and hands). Two weeks for the first 88. In order to avoid 'tweaking' keyframes for other figures, I asked about ways to avoid this in the Poser Technical forum, but the response was nothing if cryptic. Something about 'correcting controllers' and such. Nothing in my books, here, or on the web about it.