Many apologies for my absence in posting, when I'm not doing exam revision I'm developing the new shellmap, so that takes up a great deal of time with little to show after each stage. However, it's about half-done, and I look forward to showing you all it. I have also been looking into animation, skeletons and binding, so it's not been a fruitless wait for me - there has been considerable progress.
In the meantime, however, look at smiley, the Black Numenorean poster boy (whom I based my Morgoth model off, which you can see here).