animation plight

what can i say....im an average modeller...decent skinner....heck, i can unwrap pretty ezily...but i cant animate worth crap....

so i was wondering...i need a tut or something that shows how to animate a person...not a snowman or soemthing...pluz i have 4.2 so like all that dope sheet iznt dope....itz track instead...nd like the "autokey" doesnt exist...i have milkshape if that is ezier...

dont get me wrong...i can make a skeleton nd stuff...ive read all that max tuts bout IK nd crap like that...but at the end of the tutorial it juss said..."and now animate" nd i was like "wtf?"

i can also do the stuff after the animation...the notes, exporting...thats pretty ezy...but the animation is the part im clueless on....

these are some of my questions, which are the first part of my animation deficiency...
1) how can i duplicate my "pose" (certain way the model looks so i can make the beginning the same as the end) with max 4.2
2)what part of the model should the joints be at...should they be ON the joints or should they be like on the parts...
2b) if they are on the joints what do u do fo the pelvis nd chest where there isnt a joint
3) why does random animation sometimes start between the keys....like the model flips around like 5 times...
4) what type of "set key" are u suppose to do? (position, scale, rotation)

the second part of my problem is that i dont kno almost half of what the animation stuff does...like bezier nd etc...

if someone can help me plz plz do...nd i really dont care fo the mdl editing since i need to make my own animations that are not present in w3...

thank you

you can try the tutorials of Max.
Or the tut of Magos, though that is with Gmax but it's almost the same.

may i have the link plz?

ok, Mago's Tutorial

i made 2 demostration models of how animations are done, try dling .gmax cause the demostration model extantions are .gmax, .mdx and .max but this last one won't work for you cause is saved in 3dsmax 6.