here's my experiment with ikHandles:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OzLUY2t_7g

I'm looking for some tutorials that might be able to help me out...
or any help would be great thanks

i think that might be a really broad question...
without going into detail about how IK works i didn't think there was much to know

create an IK chain, move the effector and all parent bones moves accordingly with constraints.

you can add constraints to joints so they don't translate or rotate past a certain value

such things are found in the Maya tutorials that come with the program involving a robotic arm picking up a box and putting is down somewhere

if you look at other people's work where they have a character rigged to some deformer you'll see they have attached a whole lot of circles and other various wire shapes. these shapes are used to easily select the effectors or other deformers instead of you having to fiddle with visibility of certain objects to get to your deformer

(i wish i knew that earlier...it's not cool having to turn on joint visibility or toggle x-ray mode... it's not something covered in the Maya tutorials and i didn't know about it until i played with XSI)

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

Yeah i'm thinking of using deformers for other parts of the body and leaving the ik for the legs. This way the feet won't go through the ground. I will most likely remove ik from the arms. But i agree with you deformers are the way to go.

I found this tutorial on character rigging. It shows how to set up a basic character rig using IK, FK, Grab Icons and Blendshapes.

https://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-11.htm

It was a valuable asset to me when I was first learning how to rig my characters. The tutorial is very easy to follow.
The tutorial was made in maya 4.5 but the principles remain the same.