If you've got a kid who loves the Legos and the animation, you could do worse than getting him/her one of these lovely lil' Lego Stop-mo cameras. O.k., it's not exactly Dragon software and a Canon SLR (see, I know stuff!) but it is a nice lil' straightforward camera that comes with some basic capture software and two lil' Lego men. Plus it's cute as hell.
Some caveats based on reviews I've read. Image quality is a lil' grainy, but o.k. in a kind of super-8 lo-fi kinda way. See the sample animation below, courtesy of Kid's Tech Review.
The 4-way button on the back is cool, but there's no labeling, so figuring out what does what will require a bit of a read. The software is the same situation, not quite as intuitive as it could be.
It's also a lil' pricey at 100 semolians. A more practical purchase might be a half-decent webcam and a free download of Framethief or AnimatorDV Simple. Still, if you want an all-in-one package for that kid in your life with animation aspirations, it ain't bad.
