Backbones

I`ve been doing some research on spines. What would be a good spine to animate with? I learned most through a discussion on the CGTalk forums on a new spine technique, named the "Awesome spine". Main benefit of a IK-spine stup would be the independant hip and chest controll. Most IK-setups can do this and focus seems to have shifted to making such spines twist way beyond physical breaking point. The "Awesome spine" actually does do a good job on that, but it lacks solidity. As you independantly move the hips and chest, the length of the spine changes and is always stretchy. The parts would seem to be unconnected and drift in an animation. For this reason most animators still prefer a FK setup instead. With my "simple spine" setup I hoped to include all the benefits of a IK setup, while keeping the spine solid. For twisting I used a similar trick to the "Awesome spine" and upon further investigating I found more similarities. However, in the "simple spine" the spine retains its length and a nice curve, unless you increase the "max stretch"-attribute.
I haven`t gotten all the kinks out of it yet, but above video should give a impression about where I`m heading with this.