Prevent animator from affecting rigged eye

I have an animated creature that I'd like to program to look at the player via a script. Unfortunately, the eye is animated and when the animator is turned on, I can't manually set the eye rotation.

This works when the animator is turned off:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. void Update()
3. {
4.      if (_attackTarget != null)
5.      {
6.          _eyeball.LookAt(_attackTarget);
7.      }
8. }
9.  

I've gone into the animation import settings and cleared the mask on the eye, so that animations can't rotate the eye. That works great, but apparently the animation controller *still overrides anything I apply, even when the individual animations aren't changing it.

Anyone have an idea how to get this to work?

 

Ah, figured it out - using LateUpdate() instead of Update() apples the changes after the bone animation is complete.