floating head puppet arms problem

[nxtkitt]

I'm new and possibly getting lost.

My puppet is floating a head with arms. I got that working fine by having the L & R arm folders right in the head, highest in the layers so the arms&hands move in front of the face (very important).

But then I wanted to step up and allow the head to turn with profiles. So I duplicated everything and made all the adjustments (as per Okay Samurai's youtube) BUT now I have 5 sets of arms to go with every facial profile. That's A LOT of identical arm rigging!

IS THERE A WAY to have all my facial profiles and just ONE set of arms attached to this floating head puppet and the arms move in front of the head when dragged? Once I have this down I can make more puppets but this is the sticking point!  --Thanks

[nxtkitt]

I take a lunch break and started thinking differently and VOILA! Posting in case any other newbies wonder as well.

Based on watching the videos I'm always assuming the head is always 1st under the NAME in the hierarchy. I always had an invisible body because I figured arms MUST attach ONLY to "body".

In Photoshop I moved the arms ABOVE the head and got it linked and working exactly how I want. I keep the body layer invisible. When I attached the arm it glowed around the BODY layer's edge.

 Now to figure out MORE extras (like triggers) before creating more puppets and finally a project.