When you parent the sword to the hand, do NOT have it "inherit bends" from the parent... otherwise your sword will look like overcooked fish. Remember that figures (clothing and such) must be "conformed", but objects (things which don't move) are "parented". As you dress a figure, make sure to parent or conform each article you add. So. Make a new folder in your Figures Library. call it Skeleton Army. Load a skeleton. Dress the skeleton (sword or spear, maybe a rusty shoulderplate). Save the skeleton into your new folder. Give him a name!!! When you animate you add personality and it is MUCH easier to say that Benny is a sneak or that Tommy is a braggart than to say that Skel001 is anything but a pile of pixels. If you are building an army, establish your name system NOW. You can do it alphabetically: Adam, Ben, Carl (or your German equivalents).... You can do it by weapon class: Pike & sPearmen all start with "P", while Swordsmen all start with "S", and Archers all start with "A". Trust me, after you get a dozen little guys thumbing their noses and bouncing up and down, you will wish that you could tell them apart. Next step. In the Pose Library, you should make a folder called, you guessed it, Skeleton Army. Take your first skeleton, let's call him Adam, and pose him into a nice threatening stand. Save "Adam Stand" into your new pose folder. Animate him. We call random stand-in-place movements "fidgets" and this term will cover nose-thumbing and shield-banging and sword-waving as well as the usual hair-twirling and gum-chewing. Keeping note of your fps, have him wave his sword (or whatever). Save that motion to your Pose folder as "Adam Fidget" or "Adam Sword". Load up another skeleton. Dress him a bit differently. Name him and save him. Pose and animate him. Save those, too. Do this a third time. Now you are ready to start doing production work. :) Load "Ben", tweak clothing or whatever slightly (color change?) and save as Dave. Apply the stand and fidget from Adam (they are in the Pose Library, and you can just click on them as you would click on any pre-made pose), tweak them, and save them as Dave's stand and fidget. Keep mixing and matching, tweaking, adding to the Libraries. It doesn't take much to make each skeleton look distinctive, even if they are all similarly equipped Roman Legionnairies. When you run out of ideas try these: Under Render > Materials look at object color. It is a nice soft "bone" color. Change that slightly. You will render all these pups with the same light colors, but if one is greenish and one is yellowish and one is a bit whiter than the others, it will help. Be subtle here!!! Scaling. When you stand in an elevator, you realize that people come in an amazing assortment of heights. Fat people do not have bigger ribcages, AFAIK, but ribs and hips are usually proportionate to height. If Adam is 100% and George is 96% and Manfred is 105% overall scaled along the Y axis (I use BODY dials for the overall stuff) you will have a lot of difference. Invisible parts. Since these are skeletons, it is possible that not all of the bones were together for reanimating (the dog got the thigh bone and the witch up the road took the forefinger). Click on a body part, go up to Object Properties, and make it invisible. Remember that if you make a foot invisible, it should affect the way he stands! Have fun! Carolly