Okay, what difference does this make to the game other than when you transform once every game? i mean, there really is no need to go to all that effort for some ****ty animation that we can all imagine anyway. I dont mean to be rude, but the team would rather spend time on gameplay changes, or new features that will appeal to more players. Basically, i see this suggestion as nothing but a waist of time, the ammount of time it would take to do something like this really isnt worth the effort, and would you really want to pospone 1.3 for even longer so you can be satisfied with the clothes your character wears? Not to mention the fact of how difficult something like this would be =\ and when i say difficult, i mean it will not look right even if we did everything possible to make it look good, this is the hl1 engine afterall.
btw about the hands, they are like that because there is a poly limit of 1500 for esf, that means that if u really want 5 fingers on each hand you'll have to put up with box shaped characters with 5 fingers. For 1500 poly models the hands are ****ing excellent.