Basically, I want to try rerouting the characters to use different animation resource

Perhaps you remember Mayu's Animation Overhaul from Oblivion. It forces NPCs to use different animation path, so they'll always use "vanilla" type animation, allowing you to override animations in default path, giving the illusion of "PC Exclusive Animation"

I'd like to get something like that, so I want to ask things regarding animation data.

I've never opened Creation Kit before, so please bear if I ask obvious questions

First thing to do, of course, is to ask: is it possible to reassign animation data for current vanilla characters (like, say, Hadvar?)

Search ... someone did it a while back with the werewolf claw anaimation ... I can't find the topic right now ... I will a little later if you don't post you have found it

(I can't quite remember how he/she did it either)

What he was asking is if a SpecialAnims Folder still exists and it does not -> you can replace individual animations but that is going to replace that anim for every actor, the only other way would be to edit behavior files and add new animations then conditionalize them to PC only -> but that is a terrible chore editing anything in XML...

Only other method would be to create new races and replace the anims they use.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of doing. Rather than re-assigning everything, it should be easier to re-route things when it's PC doing it.

That is if it is possible. I can see "Animations" tab, but I can't seem to do anything about it other than watching them.

After visiting skyrim nexus you'll find many mods that give characters "advlt" animations. So, yes it's possible to add/alter animations.

Never thought about that. I'll try to download one and see what it did. Perhaps even I'll contact the author, see if I can get some help

Just finished tinkering around

It seems that the Stripper Companion mod did it by creating a new race and give it a set of animations from an entirely new path

My logic right now concludes that there are 2 takes on my goal:

• Modify the default races and create new races for players to use - might produce insurmountable amount of conflicts and headaches
  
• Create new races and assign them to vanilla NPCs - still might produce conflicts, but should ill be bearable

If my understanding is correct, the key here is the defaultmale/defaultfemale .hkx. Looks like it contains a list of animations available for use (and their path)