Hi all,
I’ve had a lot of problems trying to rig this character. Being a complex character, I had bone heat weighting problems. Fixing the model with envelopes proved to be really difficult for me. Could anyone suggest the best way to rig this character?
The download is here: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=44251
Personally, I don’t think you will ever be able to rig this character with topology like this:
You have duplicate vertices, gaps, mixtures of tris, quads and ngons - vastly different size polygons in the mesh, etc. etc.
You really need to look at Nathan Vegdahl’s “Humane Rigging” Tutorials to get a better idea of how to construct a soft body mesh and then rig it. Sorry to be so blunt, but that’s how it is…
You might also search for the Gingerbread man tutorials in Blender help from several years ago - they are a good starting point for modelling. 34 thousand faces in a mesh like this is way, way too many - look also at the sub-division modifier to get smoother, more defined topology without billions of vertices.
Cheers, Clock.
-Deleted Double Post- Sorry!
Clock is right, this is a terrible topology for rigging and mesh deformation.
You need to have as little tri’s as possible, and clean flowing edge loops! no ngon’s at all. IMO You should never have ngons in a mesh that will be deformed! The cleaner the meshes topology, the cleaner your deformations will be 
Study this human topology series by jonathan williamson - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBL6XxPV4C9QnaZxQC5Q6EmjzOIGjyci2
edit: This is also another good video (If you want to observe a good modelling workflow for organic forms) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpAhkWSyum4
Thanks for the help guys! I know the mesh is messy. It was never intended for animating originally. I just wanted to know if it was possible so I didn’t have to re model it.
Thanks again for looking at the file.
I have to say that remodelling will be faster than trying to correct this mesh. You might try a shrinkwrap modifier with this mesh as the target so you can get the same shape with better topology. Then you can apply the shrinkwrap mod once you are happy with the general shape. Try to keep the edge loops clean and straight or smoothly curved, in fact what you could do is download MakeHuman programme then go to Blender User Prefs and activate the MakeHuman add-ons and import a MakeHuman mesh into Blender. This will give you an excellent idea of good human topology.
Cheers, Clock.
PS . I can post you a human character once I get back home from Australia if you are still having any trouble with this. I will be home at the end of November
An alternative to make human is ManuelLab, basically the same thing but it is integrated directly into blender as an add-on 
it has better topology for it’s characters too IMO
Thanks guys!!
I think I’ve managed it.