I'm wading in the shallow end. The water is a little cold but you get used to it. I use the animation pallette a great deal, telling where to start and stop splines, where to be linear etc. I will use the graph only when something goes horribly wrong. The graph allows you to see what's happening in a way that makes sense. Leave IK off. But turn it back on for posing subtle movements and fluid motions...then turn it back off again when you're done. Do little chunks at a time, I'd say no more than five seconds a shot. Much more than that and you're going to generate too many ripple effects to keep track of if you need to change anything. Plus, it's a lot easier to render small chunks and stitch them together later. Animate preview-window-only frequently to check your timing. "Retime animation" works pretty well actually, don't be afraid to use it if you're movements come off to slow or too fast. Use a 640x480 preview window if you can, or other derivative of that dimension since that is what clips should fill. Anything else will give you a cropped result anyway. Experiment a lot with magnets and waves to get realistic ripples and gravity effects where needed. Use "Inhale" morph at intervals to bring your models to life. Same with "Blink" (No more than five frames to cycle blink on and off). Stay away from BVH files and walk designer if possible, they make every frame a key frame, which makes it extremely difficult to tweak. That's about it from me. -WTB