kind of answered my question, I'm still a bit confused on how to model all these parts, I'll give it a shot and see if I can get anywhere with this.

thanks to Chirone I got the idea, I moved all the pieces into transformed position, I haven't modeled any of the pieces that will hold it in place but this is the basic Idea, wanted to see what I had to work with and all that

Thanks again for the help made this whole idea easier to wrap my head around and a lot less frustrating than I thought it would be.

So this is before and after, with wireframes. Basic idea of how it will look when it's done.

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/7...merconcept.jpg

should I be using 3 to smooth or should I build it with enough topography to make it smooth without having to hit 3?

i'm under the impression that hitting 3 will increase your render time (since its a render time smoothing) but actually smoothing will slow down your computer when working in the scene since the polycount quadruples for each subdivision.

so i just hit 3...

alright thanks

I'm getting kind of stuck on how to make these pieces actually move to these positions (specifically the arms) without just floating to them.

Never posted this shot so I will now
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/7...seethrough.jpg

you shrunk its shins down?

hmm, not sure what you mean by 'floating to them'

is it what sort of joints you want to model? the things that connect the arms to the body?