thought that was just me lol, downgrading to a lower version of the rig might actually help but idk
Yeah, don't really want to do that, because of the improvements, but is there a chance using 2.49 instead of the latest would work better? Will post the eight-second final render here later, by the way.
EDIT: Here is the "completed" animation.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26821247/Blockhead%20Test.mp4 I could've done better, but once Blender borked my file, I sorta lost heart a little, and just finished the bag pickup part and rendered without cleaning up/smoothing out any of the animation. Also, his feet are cut off to hide the twisty-toes.