Show Player Getting Picked Up (Or in Animation Interactions in General)

I am trying to figure out the cleanest/best looking way for a monster to pick up the player in game. I tried putting something together by simply looking at the time of the monster attack animation, and putting the Player as a child of the monster's hand. While I successfully put this together, it left me wondering. Isn't there a better way to have two animations interact with each other? Is there some logical alternative approach, or is there some sort of cool unity feature tucked away in Mecanim that I am unaware of?

Another example, is how to get two humanoid object animations to high five each other?

Thanks,
Stephen

 

If you have Pro, have you tried hand IK (for high fiving) or target matching (for getting the player in position to be picked up)?

The guys at Naughty Dog did a presentation on character animation, including what they call "reference locators" for getting characters to interact. You can view it here: http://www.naughtydog.com/docs/Naughty-Dog-GDC08-Creating-a-Character-in-Drakes-Fortune.pdf