How animation is created

Within Mayas software there is a timeline which allows you to animate your model, I will be briefly explaining the process which takes place, as well as explaining how cameras and lights are added into the scene once the model is animated. 

To begin, a scene with a fully rigged & binded model is necessary, if you will be moving a character. Below this screenshot, Maya's timeline is visible. 

The next step is choosing which area of the model you wish to begin animating, for this example; I will be animating Baby dragons left arm. By clicking onto the IK handle and pressing 'S', the entire handle/limb is now ready to track any future movements given, and ready to be placed into the timeline. To ensure the IK is ready to be keyframed, you can see the transform attributes figures have been highlighted red. 

Most importantly, a visible red line should have appeared in the timeline below, this has inserted the first keyframe, and the limbs position for that keyframe. Movement is now ready to be added in. Depending on how long you would like the movement to be, clicking over to a number in the timeline will be the end of the movement for that segment. If I were to lift up the left arm after dragging the timeline to number '25', you will see that the frames in between 1 and 25 will fill with the movement you had just created in your model.

the movements end mark is created where the following red line is marked, this screenshot being the number 25.

by clicking and dragging into the timeline, you will be able to view which movements have been tracked, where the number 13 is highlighted in white is the area I am in right now, this is showing the frames between the keyframe; which is how movement is being created. As you can see the arm is beginning to lift. 

the icon for ''auto key toggle' switched on, notice it is highlighted red. When turned off and you want to add the keyframes manually, the icon will be grey.

It is the users choice whether they physically insert that keyframe by pressing the 'S' ley, or if they would like Maya to automatically make that move for you. This is accomplished by turning the 'Auto keyframe toggle' on. the icon should be highlighted red. This way you can choose an area within a timeline and make the movement, and the keyframe will be added in automatically - allowing you to be in a consistent flow of animating the model; Maya always recording the next step.

The model is now animated, continuation of this method will get the model from the beginning of your characters movement to the end of your characters movement for the scene a user wishes to create.