Weird Armature Deformation When I apply an armature to a character (with automatic weight), my character gets a really weird bend on any parts of its body. I have rigged a character before, so I don't know how it went wrong. I've repeated the process multiple times and got the same results. I even tried exporting it as a mesh and loading it into a new blender file, but I still get the distortions. I have the blender file available, but don't know how to share it, so if you need it, tell me how. 

EDIT: Here's the file: http://pasteall.org/blend/23791. The bones are in place, but the modifiers need to be applied before applying the bones. (With automatic weights.)

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While you can rig with a Mirror modifier on your mesh, it is best in your case here to just apply it, you won't be able to rig your character properly if it is active with your current naming scheme. You might also want to then change your Pivot center from 3D Cursor to Bounding Box Center by using , (comma) or selecting it from the view header, having it set to rotate around the 3D Cursor can also lead to some weird behaviour when trying to pose if you don't know what to expect. You might also want to recalculate your mesh normals at this point with CtrlN.

…and finally, try again..

For some help in parenting the mesh to the armature, you can refer to How can I automatically generate vertex groups for an armature?. It wouldn't hurt to add some more geometry (loopcuts) to the arms and legs to help the character deform better either.