I've solved the eye issues---the rig includes a number of locators and clusters that control the eyelid deformation and they all have to be centered at the same place as the eye to work properly. So, in addition to detaching the head Geo with history on, moving the parent eye joint and reskinning the head so the eyelids didn't move with the eye, I also had to move locators and cluster pivots. All in all the eyes work fine, though the eye aim doesn't work anymore--I tried to realign the curves with the new position of the eyes, but the aim has a bunch of utilities built in that I couldn't figure out how to fix, and honestly, I should animate the eyes locally anyway.
Modeling
I've spent a lot more time on the face. I finished the hair modeling, added eyebrows and continued to tweak the eye sockets. They are far more almond-shaped now and look much more human. I made the nose a little less childlike by pulling the tip in a little so it doesn't look so much like a cherub. As well I pared back the cheeks some. Using my own advice I scaled the rig to get the head and hat/hair geo to have more depth and used that geo as blend shapes so the controls aren't scaled. I worked on the modeling of the upper body and the arms, as well as adding a hood to the sweatshirt he's wearing, with a pull cord. I've remodeled the pelvis and the thighs some the start to get pant-like legs instead of thin sticks. Below is a 3/4 shot of the model at the moment.
Skinning
I've worked on the skinning of the shoulders and am fairly happy with the result. There is a fairly smooth transition between the three pieces of geometry that merge at the shoulder--the upper arm, the shoulder ball and the torso. I'm a little worried that the intersecting geometry will look bad in renders, but I am hoping to give the texturing a very funky, stitched look. It will match the bohemian, hippie/skater style that I'm going for and hopefully I can get the stitching to fall along the edges of the various pieces of geometry. Below is an image of the back of the model with the shoulders in extreme positions. As well, the modeling of the hood is evident.
The problem I'm having currently is skinning at the elbows (and I am guessing I will have the same troubles with the knees, though I haven't tried to skin them yet). Because there are bendable bones built into the rig the arms are weighted to joints for the purpose of bending them. Instead of having a sphere as the elbow, I would rather weight the upper arm and forearm end vertices the same so that it becomes one continuous arm in the same way I skinned the shoulders. However, I'm having trouble figuring out which joint to weight the vertices to so that they move with the elbow. I've tried a number of the joints but none of them seem to do anything. I will have to keep experimenting...
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