Finally time to give an update on here. I got "How to Cheat in Maya 2013" as a Christmas gift, so I've been going through that and learning some new tips. To start with, I learned about Maya's animation layers, which are possibly the most helpful thing I've ever utilized in here. They're basically Autodesk's answer to Adobe's layers in Photoshop. They can be enabled or disabled to apply whatever set of animation is attributed to that specific layer. The book provided a default animation and walked me through the task of using layers to exaggerate the pre-existing animation. The original animation can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY-eAn1l894&feature=youtu.be The great thing about layers, though, is that they can be toggled on and off. So after I edited the curves to give it a more exaggerated feel, I could just go ahead and disable it to revert the animation back to it's original format. Here's the layer area right here: That single button makes animation much easier. Here's a clip of the finished, exaggerated version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL-kZOe3spc&feature=youtu.be Continuing the book's guidance, I added a bit more character by giving him a head shake. Again, all of this can be undone with the click of a button without the need to rustle between save files and scenes. Truly a lifesaver. Here's a clip of the final everything: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUk48E89G6g&feature=youtu.be