Hi yo. I've been running into similar weirdnesses. I've also been experiementing with stick figures in order to learn about bones. And setting up the influences is definitely the key. Above is my stick-figure version of Death (best not to ask). I ran into similar problems with the edges of his robe doing stupid things when I moved the fingers or hand. I think now what I should have done is made the polygons on the edges of the robe influenced by the elbows 100%. I will try that tonight and see what happens. Death, by the way, is two vertex objects -- the bones and the robe, which I have attached to the same skeleton. Don't know if this is the right approach or not, but it made the texturing easy.