Using imposters in the distance for animated meshes?

I am trying to increase the number of animated characters that I could render simultaneously in the view frustum.

I have gone through the documentation for imposters and flipbook animations. Great features.

I am thinking of the following scenario:

*Use an animated mesh for a character in the near and medium distances from the camera.

*Change to imposters in the far distance.

So far, imposter examples talk only about static meshes.

I have a vague idea that flipbooks would solve my problem.

For a given animated character, is there a technique to switch from animated mesh to flipbook based imposters based on distance from camera?