Some creative fixes to the rigging stage challenges. Part of her clothing was difficult to weight to the body. Copying the skin weights was not much help probably because the body and bikini mesh was different. I figured that if I am using a cel shaded look then I should be able to draw on skintight clothing without it being an issue. The first image shows the result of trying the first picture I had in hand (screenshot of her uvs) as the base colour for the aitoon shader. Then I went on and did a quick trial texture in substance and it seemed to do the trick.
Advanced skeleton is super quick to set up - but only when not deviating from the set path from start to finish. For instance, even though my model was referenced in to the scene, when I changed the referenced file, the mesh became unworkable. So when I discovered that I needed to make changes to the geometry I had to either start from the beginning or come up with something else. Exporting the skin weights was not an option either, and just gave similar errors when I tried to save some of the work Ive done. I think I tried to solve a bit too much with weight painting as it either altered the facial weights when done after all the rigging or distorted the body weights when done before the facial rig.
Looking back I would reduce some layered geometry and spend less time on weight painting and instead make more blendshapes. Advanced skeleton has a handy corrective shapes option and Maya own blendhsapes are so friendly to work with.