Hi nextdesign. Ah, thanks for the reply. I was up till 6 in the morning last night doing different bits and pieces and I think my tiredness stopped my thinking logically (doesn't take alot!)... Yes you're right, it is IK Blend, I checked back through the book for what happened during the leg set-up, because an Ik Fk blend was set up there too. I didn't quite get the concept of what the point of the blend was but should find out when the animating begins (fingers crossed)

The tutorial, is from "Learning Autodesk Maya 2008: The Modelling and Animation Handbook". It's an entire book length, with three characters, nurbs modelling, poly and sub, d, texturing, and the whole rigging, blend shapes, custom attributes, character sets; right up to file refencing and lip synching audio (the supporting cd-rom has audio files).

Im working through it quite slowly. I'm near to finishing the rig. Then it's onto the blend shapes. Don't know why, but I'm not really looking forward to doing them.