I'm playing around in CTA, making an actual clip, amd I've run across something that I'm not quite sure how to handle from a technical perspective.  I'll resolve it with createive camera angle and zooms, and visiblibility keyframes, however for a project where this kind of trickery wont work, I wonder if there is a solution.

First of all a gripe... drag anything onto the stage, and there's no easy way to place it at the proper z-depth in the scene.  I have a prop I want my character to carry, but whenever I place it into the scene,it's so far back in the z-depth, that unless you actually check the depth placement of things, it causes quite a bit of irritation in getting it placed correctly.  Just something for others to watch out for.

Ok, 2 other gripes...  zoom your scene in on a place you're specifically wanting to look at, click the 3D view button, and it resets the placement of the view.  I'd rather it stay positioned and zoomed where I'm at, because it's that position I really want to check the 3D depth position of stuff.

And if you have the timeline open and docked, and have the object related track enabled, and delete the active item, the timeline closes.  I always have to re-open it, and of course any time you re-open it, you have to reconfigure which tracks to have open.

Ok, anyways... the issue.  I dropped my prop onto the stage, positioned it correctly in all three axises, and I want to link it to the character left hand.  No problem there.  Then I want him to walk across the scene.  As his hand and arm passes over his body, the item he's carrying is behind his body.  For this particual video, it's initially ok because the item will be hidden at the beginning of the animation.  But at some point, he's going to pull this item from his pocket, and pull it out in front of him, which will require passing over his body, and the item itself will be behind his body.

See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnhcPBuFBLw

Anyone, specifially someone at RL, know how to deal with this?  I'd like it behind his hand, but in front of his body...

[EDIT]

Oh, and one more question... Is there a way to flip just the head of my character while standing still, to give the appearance that he's looking both ways?  I can only seem to flip the whole character but I just want the head to flip horizontally...