The paper presents a model of an articulated figure for use in the animation of human locomotion. This model is an evolution of the standard hierarchical joint-based representation of a human figure, which is widely used in figure animation. Whereas previous models have been based on a simplified mechanics-based view of the joints, our model is based on an anatomical approach. This model uses physically-measured data of the behaviour of human joints and allows the simulation of such important attributes of real joints as combined motions and moving axes of rotation these are well known in biomechanics but have not previously been used in figure animation. We identify the joints for which it is important to simulate these features and analyse how they can affect the visual impression of animation.