How to rig a character

Or how to rig a character for efficiency.

I have worked in hand drawn animation, Flash animation, and 3D animation but never really worked in Toon Boom's Harmony. That being said I've always felt that character rigs at our studio may be a bit over produced, if that makes sense. Some times characters are rigged so thoroughly they take away the necessity to actually draw. Some times the rigs don't fully consider the final look of the character or the range of motions they'll be put through.

 One of the first conversations I had with Scott Williamson, or TD Supervisor, was that I wanted a simple rig for our characters that was going to be easy to work with and very efficient. Our characters have an animated texture which glows within and a sort of charcoal, sketchy line. I wanted the texture to have little to no impact whatsoever regarding the animators and the brush line had to be easily replicable. Scott was able to deliver on both accounts as well as add some special treats which we discovered during our time together on Bubble Guppies. We're talking sliders which control pre posed character posing and expressions. buttons which control the animated textures being on or off, timing of textures, opacity of textures and a bunch of other stuff I have no idea about. 

Some of this has existed before Mr. King but to my knowledge not as efficient and simplified.

I have asked Scott to type up a more thorough list of that which he has worked to create but for now I think he's too busy creating more "simple" tools.