That's a neat guy, Hawt Koffee. How much of the shading is painted on and how much is actual rendered stuff? Everything looks soft and painterly.
Thank'eh, Fawful. My basic armature looks like this:
It's just a slightly modified version of the one shown in this Blender Cookie tutorial:
Can't do the IK on the arms, though, which is unfortunate. The extra two bones in the arms are for twisting it around, and I've usually got it modeled so that the large cuffs are separate from the arm itself to avoid having to deal with twist deformation. So, on the animated guy, Lark, for example, his hands and the cuffs on the gloves are attached to the wrist twist bone, while his forearm (That white bit) is attached to the actual forearm bone.
I'm quite liberal with the helper bones as well, so I modify it for each character. If they've got something that should move separately, it's got bones for it. CHARLES up there, for example, has eleven bones for the coat; two for each sleeve, and six for the coat itself, as well as one for the collar.
Those two bones floating on the hands are for weapons or other held things. I can do nifty tricks with 'em like making Lark appear to sheathe his sword. I actually had two swords: One in his hand, and one already sheathed. The one not in use is just shrunk down to nothing while the one in use is normal-sized. Then I just switch the sizes when appropriate.
For the eye bones on there, the two on either side copy the rotation of the center one, so that's the only bone I have to move for both eyes.
Also, I made some lights.
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