So, I spent the bulk of this week setting up a custom facial rig for Taurin and learning how to animate dialogue. This is the result, after I created a set of phonemes for Taurin and painstakingly keyed those to audio queues in the dialogue. I also added in secondary facial animation (blinks, eyebrow motion, etc...), and I have to say the result so far has exceeded my expectations!
I still need to do some cleanup work and animate the hands, but I think this is getting pretty damn close to being ready for a final render. I still have to set up the fur, of course.
Enjoy!