I've decided to try a different strategy for the hip/thigh JCMs. Instead of making separate shapes for the forward (X-axis) and sideways (Z-axis) rotations, I made one for forward and one for both combined that adds to the already active JCM for forward. So what I'm getting is a JCM that is slaved to the sideways motion, but its shape is defined on the pose that combines both.

I hope I'm making myself clear here. It confuses me as well.

At any rate, the reason I'm doing it this way is because it's not really possible to move ones leg just sideways by a large angle. Any realistic pose would in fact be a combination of forward and sideways. So I should aim for the forward and the forward with sidways to look good rather than the forward and the pure sideways. Interestingly, when I do the pure sideways pose now, it has a little bit of distortion but is far better than what I got previously for the combined pose.

So here's what it looks like. Of course I'm somewhat cheating here because the pose I'm showing is pretty close to the one I sculpted this JCM on.

Anyway, I think it's a good method, and I'll try a similar thing with the shoulders.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.