My completely unprofessional rig which is probably unusable by anyone else but does the job for me.  It's off-centre from the base (which everything is eventually parented to) because I did some ground stuff directly beforehand.  The arms are a bit awkward to position at times as I'm using the targets to control the rotation for the elbows as I can't seem to get pole targets working on arms for some reason (no problems on legs but legs are just easier).  I'll give it another shot before committing to the rig enough to transfer it to the other two models.

Screencap of Base after mouthing "Seriously again?" (it doesn't have a voice).  I'm trying to work out how to tackle doing bone drivers for the 10 phoneme key shapes I have.  They'll easily fit on the three mouth controllers that I have seeing as I only use one direction for anything but knowing my luck I'll have a hell of a time remembering what's what.

Still it may have to happen seeing as bone keys are a lot easier to move than shape key keys (I actually can't seem to move shape key keys at all for some reason).

This is a screenie, Base is actually looking directly at the camera so will be rendered more front on.

Set up controller bones (I like them in their own Armature) and make sure the "deform" box in the bone properties panel is unchecked.

I find it easier having the entire face moving around with the eye directional controller because I'm weird like that (and also they end up in odd places because of how I have the head controller).

On the mesh where the shape keys are, right click on the shape key that needs to be driven by the bone.  In this example the eyebrow raise.

Click "Add Driver" on the context menu that pops up.

This is another one of those rare instances where I post to an external site before the blog.

I haven't had a chance to set up a video thingi yet and am not willing to do it from Christmas Island (internet is tooooooooo slooooooowwwwwwww) so I am attempting to finally try to start getting over the grudge I have against Google over their mind numbingly idiotic real names policy that resulted in the nymwars (to their credit they have seemed to realise how stupid the policy was and how stupid it made them look and are now letting people call themselves whatever, and are now no longer forcing Youtube channels to be attached to G+ pages if you decide you don't actually want to use your own name, I have decided I seriously can't be bothered trying to recreate my old ryivhnn channel.

At 8yo's request: "Make him frown!" (all the bases are gender neutral)

Seeing something mildly disturbing

Shock horror! I could have opened its mouth more but I was too lazy to go back to object mode to show the rig layer to be able to grab the jaw controller

To get a point that was moved incorrectly for whatever reason in a shape key and needs to be reset to the "Basis" position, from Adhi on StackExchange:

Still shape keying.  Base is partially amused.

So far I've got all of a left eye wink and a half smile.  Once I got the left half smile right and figure out where the eyelashes go I'll mirror those shape keys and then do some really basic expression parts around happy, sad, angry and surprise which generally use the entire face.  Then make some phonemes with help from this useful phoneme shape guide someone had thoughtfully thrown at the internet.

Sculpt mode is awesome for shape keying.

Thought to do a quickie render rather than a screencap of the handstand splits, decided I couldn't be bothered fixing the lights at this stage so ticked the "Freestyle" box and left it at default everything.

It's pretty cool; I could almost pretend I know how to draw with this.

Vaguely related, grease pencil is the most useful thing ever put into a 3d app.

bek can rig, though I'm sure I'm probably doing it horribly wrong.  It's a combination of rigging techniques learned in Lightwave and playing with the Armature modifier, with one tangent into using bendy bones (single bones with multiple segments) for the spine from the head down and then two bendy bones for neck and spine.

Had to put one more controller in to flex the spine in the right direction.  The neck flexes one way (looking downward) fine but will not flex the other way (it's jaggy in this pose, effects can be seen if you look carefully at the neck), adding another shape to control the flex like I did with the spine didn't help and neither did my aforementioned tangent into bendy bones.

3d-bek wonders what in the hell is going on and what we're getting ourselves into :)

I'm quite pleased with how my rig is turning out.  Little niggly fine tuning things on the arms, but I (finally, because I iz slow) worked out that I should turn off the heading and pitch channels on the shoulder and use the collarbone to control those, and point the elbow with the shoulder's bank channel.

Sasquatch is awesome.  The hand is angled a bit strangley but the hair is automagically avoiding the fingers :D

Low level antialiasing, no cloth dynamics yet, still working on textures and hair.