I got things working well enough for my demo by making a simple change to the project.xml
:~/dev/sakai/melete-2.3.m2/melete-app csev$ vi project.xml
<!– 2.4 Patch –>
<dependency>
<groupId>xerces</groupId>
<artifactId>xercesImpl</artifactId>
<version>2.6.2</version>
<properties>
<war.bundle>true</war.bundle>
</properties>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>xerces</groupId>
<artifactId>xmlParserAPIs</artifactId>
<version>2.6.2</version>
<properties>
<war.bundle>true</war.bundle>
</properties>
</dependency>

The Tiger in this video bears a striking resemblance to the Sakaiger
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/kenya/
This video is similar but the similarity is less striking:
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/kenya+live/