I found trying to use lattices a little hard to do in practice.
Here's another idea.
1. make a quick select set for primary joints
2. make halfway joints
3. make a quick script to add influence to skin cluster
4. skin primary joints (ex: 3 max influences, closest distance, selected joints)
5. select each influence then geometry (add influence default settings)
now by repeatedly doing 2 through 5 we can quickly get some skinning ideas (each time we can remove skin by using delete by type history). Maybe even later we can add some cool things on top, but this helped me quickly make a skin (see figures)
Regards,
Nate
Inspired by Jason Schleifer's Animator Friendly Rigging (jasonschleifer dot com)
