Ok, Let me restate what happened with this skel. 1.) I really really hated the textures so I re-textured him (and dude, there are a lot of bones). It took a while. 2.) There were some things about him that I really hated geometrically so they had to be fixed (like one of the cross sections in his skull was crooked, very very annoying). There were quite a few pesky repairs and they took a while. 3.) I re-grouped the entire model. This was done so that I could pose him easily and there were some stupid groupings in it originally and there were empty groupings in it. 4.) The smarter groupings then allowed me to move the hotpoints to strategic locations. After all of this was done (steps three and four took me about 1.5 hours), I was able to create the animation I posted in about ten minutes. I've been able to do other things with him very easily and quickly. I've never looked into IK because I haven't had time, the animation stuff for people was always too clumsy and limited so I never really studied it and it sounds very buggy. Consequently I haven't taken the plunge down that hole yet. The way I've done it works very well for me, is fast, and doesn't break. -Kix

-Kix