It all depends on the style of animation. For software there are four areas I see as key to animation where it can help. I'm talking about hand-drawn 2D animati

It all depends on the style of animation. For software there are four areas I see as key to animation where it can help. I'm talking about hand-drawn 2D animation here. 1. Workflow - we've seen that since 90s when animation software became available to general public. First we've made paper to screen workflow available with (softimage) Toonz! and alike where workflow was draw on paper, scan and then check, ink, color on computer. Later on everything became digital and workflow is now, more or less, well understood. I'm not sure if you can make the workflow more approachable unless you redefine animation process. Integration with stuff like Shotgun for project tracking and stuff like that could help, but it's not related to animation itself as much as project management. 2. Technique - computers, obviously, helped pioneer new techniques like 3D, 3D with toon shading, and 'rigged' 2D puppets. Along with numerous special effects that stem from compositing world. 3. Utility while drawing - this is where most innovation came about when helping out hand-drawn animation. Now that drawing is digital, we've seen tools that help a lot. Like 'lazy mouse' approach to semi-automatic curve control while drawing, help while coloring (otherwise a boring task), etc. 4. Utility while animating - this is what you are talking about. It depends deeply on whether you want that style or not, I guess. I know a lot of animators are excited about possible advancements in this department. Basically, drawing a character 'set', if you will, in different poses and viewing angles, rigging them and then puppeteering then with manipulating bones and not drawing everything from scratch each time. It limits what you can do, but at the same time opens up volume production on a small resources scale. Now, there's a trend towards innovating tools you're talking about, where computer manipulates the rig for you based on your indirect input and not only by you manipulating the rig. Character studio from Adobe (in beta still) shows what this is about. I'm excited for this and tools like that. Challenge still is to not have everything produced like that have a certain (same) style to it. edit: you've said you were in animation software. My speciality is more 3D - if you remember SEGA's Animanium... that's what's missing these days. I wonder why it never had a success when it came out. Animanium paired with dead easy rigging would make a splash. Also, something like that, but that allows for real time puppeteering on a touch surface (tablet or whatever) would help A LOT. For example, a rig with controls where you can animate in real time multiple control points at the same time... record that... then do another run where you animate only one point, etc. It's amazing something like that doesn't exist yet. I know you can do it in 3dsmax to an extent, but not really.