Advice on Multiple Characters from one Base character.

Hi

I’m just finishing up a creature rig and I’m planning of using it as a basis for multiple animals in one scene, they will be running in formation pulling a cart.

My plan is to do the following:

• Finish one character and then animate a run cycle
• Save the file as a new file, edit the textures and then remodel some solid objects that are parented to it to add variation.
• Rename all the objects on the character to make it unique.
• Repeat this process until I have enough different characters.
• Merge all the files into one scene and position them all in formation.

I know that I can offset the run cycles to give it a random look so hopefully that will help.

Other than that does anyone have any advice on what they would do as a whole?

Cheers for any replies.

Tom