In Maya, you move and pose your character during animation using kinematics. Kinematics is a system with which you can specify motion for your skeleton. There are two types of kinematics in Maya: forward kinematics (FK) and inverse kinematics (IK). Each type of kinematics is best suited for specific types of motion.
With inverse kinematics, you translate and key an IK handle to pose and animate the transformations and rotations of its IK chain’s joints. All the joints between the start and end joints of the IK handle are driven by the IK handle. Inverse kinematics is ideal for creating goal-directed motions such as the motion of a biped’s hand reaching for an object.
With forward kinematics, you rotate and key the individual joints in the skeleton. Forward kinematics is ideal for creating detailed arc motions such as the rotation of a biped’s shoulder joint.
In addition to using solely FK or IK to pose and animate the joints of your skeleton, you can blend FK and IK animation on the same joints.