Locators and props

One of the hurdles I had to overcome when animating was keeping the props, namely that hats, glasses and mustache, attached to the characters when their heads moved. To achieve this I used a system by which I created a series of locators and parented them to a specific control on the rig, namely the head control. I then parented the locator to the prop I wanted to remain fixed.

Secondly I wanted to make the private character at one point reach behind him and reveal a picture of the king, to do this I locator bound a modeled frame with a photo texture to his hand and then hid the model, creating a key frame at which I would re toggle its display options, making it visible again. This gives the illusion that the frame is not in his hand until he reaches behind him, when it then appears.