Greetings,
Someone asked me what tools I use on this project. Let me first declare my amateur status on all of them, except PowerPoint. I've got years of experience in that beast. This list is basically the same stuff used on the Getting to Know Brenda game.
Poser Pro
This is where most of the work happens. I have a collection of figures and props, often deployed with a lot of customization. There are cameras, and lights and about a zillion variations and properties on everything. Very time intensive. The final products of the renders are individual graphic files, although it will do .avi animations as well.
This application is a total resource hog (with good reason). I'm running a Pentium Dual CPU @ 2.00 GHz with 8 GB of RAM and a video card with another 1 GB of RAM and still when I do a render it makes the CPU 90 - 100% busy and uses up to 70% of RAM during a 3-5 minute render of a single frame.
If you want to see really professional items made with this tool, check out the Renderotica Gallery on the web (requires registration). I'm not a fan of all the content types there, but I abhor censorship more.
PhotoShop
"Post work" as it is called is often necessary to add effects not possible or practical in Poser and to touch up minor flaws. Much of the customization done in Poser involves editing graphic files that are used for the appearance (texture, color, detail etc.) of figures and props.
PowerPoint
Used as a storyboard tool as well as the source of the word and thought balloons and other graphic elements that get imported into Flash.
Flash
This is where the final product is made. Graphics are imported and simple cross-fade animations staged and other elements like navigation, text and whatnot are implemented. Another time consuming stage.
So that is probably more than anybody wanted to know, but it is what it is.