It can be hard and sometimes impossible to see what the rig is doing unless we can see it effects geometry.
We don't want to bind the joints to the mesh yet because we don't have everything hooked up yet.
So we need to tear create geometry and just parent it under the bones to see how everything interacts.
You can see from the picture below, that the geometry are just blocks, but they still can define the overall geometry.
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STEP 1: Create Geometry
There is a button on the rigging shelf that is used to add geometry to a joint (looks like a rolling pin with a red + sign).
For each bind joint, select the joint and then click the "Add Geo to Selected Skeletons" button (Don't do this on the ends of a chain).
Make sure the mime mesh is visible and template it by going to Display > Object Display > Template
Scale each of the newly created pieces of geometry so that they approximate the original volume/shape of the mime's mesh
Don't worry about moving individual vertices, just leave the geometry as scaled cubes.
When you're done untemplate the mime's mesh by selecting it in the outliner and going to Display > Object Display > Untemplate.
Alternatively, you can create the low poly geometry by copying the mime mesh and chopping it up.
To do this, select a set of faces on the copied geometry, then go to Mesh > Extract (Under the Polygons Menuset).
If you create the geometry this way, it will look nicer, but you'll have to manually parent all of the geometry and it takes a little longer.
The screenshots for the rest of the tutorial have the low poly geometry cut up in this way, but the principle is the same either way.
