Have since reworked the rig for the Ural character in Maya 2011 to get up to speed in that, notabally I've set up set driven key expressions hand clenching & I've stopped using ik's in the arms in legs as I've found it easier to animate joints manually. I didn't enjoy the leap from 8.5 to 2008 a couple years ago but 2011 has restored my faith! Next on the to do list is to test the GoZ! link with zbrush plugin.

Aside from this I've begun using Illustrator and have started a little test animation projectlett to test out workflow between this, flash & after effects.