Quick overview on HPL2 Animation

[Acies]

You shouldn't be twisting the mesh into a T-shape, it's not going to go well :]

I had to look at the angel, wouldn't say it's a good mesh for setting up animation! The pose is bad, the legs are connected by vertices etc.

I quickly went over it creating a skeleton and doing some weight painting. There's still some kinks there and I'm not sure it came out better than what you had:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2079...Statue.zip

But when working with something like this as your base you'll have to settle for mediocre :] You can still go over it a little more if you would like to. Maybe you'll learn something taking a look at it, I dunno - animation is really not my thing :]