Before attempting a full body rig using different types of controls and setting the characters up with visual selectors for full animation I did some trying out of the tools today.

I made a simple skeleton of a crude spine and legs IK and used the bind tool to attach it to the character mesh. It's a tricky concept to understand how the heirarchy's work and how to control each joint with a number of null objects (goals and poles) but I think after some experimentation I should be able to attempt a full rig on a character.

The hardest part technically is getting the weight map correct so the joints affect the desired part of the mesh, once more joints are added and the skeleton has more detail the 'auto weight' tool should go a long way to helping and only tweaks should be made. As the first image shows the leg joint is trying to control areas of the mesh as far away as the arm because it is the closest joint, giving it a huge falloff.

I've then adjusted the weight map by painting with the weight tool around that joint and fixing the affected area to buckle where it would on a sewn toy made of soft material.