Okay! So here's what we're almost definitely going to be using for animation, if you modelers can figure it out (hopefully you can, because I could )
http://www.insanesoftware.de/index.php? ... nloads.php
This program, although dated, is perfect--it does exactly what I was going to write. It imports a static model, adds rigging and you can do animations with it. It even exports in a perfectly compliant .X skinned mesh (even though we're not using skinned meshes, it's still amazing that it supports them!)