Playing around with reference footage really opened my eyes to some key things. I found that keeping my camera angle consistent between my reference videos and Maya scene makes a huge difference. I ended up setting up my camera on the left view and front view just as I had planned it out, which let me work through the poses step by step without second-guessing myself.
Rather than just working with basic poses, I started experimenting with this really cool proxy rig technique – essentially creating a simplified version with basic boxes to nail down the core movement before getting into the detailed character animation.
The biggest revelation was how much easier it is to focus on one thing at a time. I’d set up these basic box shapes to represent different parts of the body, animate those first to get the overall motion flow, and then transfer that data to the actual character rig. It’s like having training wheels – you can focus purely on the big picture movement without getting bogged down in all the details of arms, hands and feet etc.