Skinning
I’m currently skinning a realistic female character. Deformers are a bit troublesome, but I was recently introduced to one of Mike Comet’s wonderful plug-ins, poseDeformer. This plug-in basically allows you deform your posed character and use it as a blendshape. Because you can delete the blendshape meshes after they’ve been plugged in, the files are smaller than they would be if you used influence objects. His MEL scripts have also come in handy. If you haven’t done so already, you should check out his site: http://comet-cartoons.com/