I thought about this when I posted my first tutorial on johnl3d.blogspot.com I used a pose without explaining how... so I guess that should be my next tutorial. I find creating a pose to do an effect very useful . In this example to show what I mean I have a rough egg shape change color then disappear..go transparent.. I set this up with two simple poses..which are set up in the action window where you set up a new pose. I could have made an action but that would require more work and more setup in the end. Here I imported the same model into the chor and scaled it so each fit inside the other then simply move the pose over time for each one ...pose 1 to change the color over 15 frames then pose 2 to to cause the disappearance in turn for each one. It was easy and I could complete control for example I could have done both poses together or in different combinations to increase the effect.
pose.mov
pose.zip
sorry to interrupt my sabbatical from posting