ok thanks - that is what i wanted to know. i am right now looking for ideas to make a very very low poly character for a animation. and my first thought was to finish the animation with the low poly version - so that i have less stress with rigging it. and when the animation is ready - to just convert the character with a proxy to subd. the shaping in subd and then converting back to poly for the blendshapes sounds very good to me. so much to learn yet