Amanda Healy on building a rigging portfolio in Harmony

Amanda Healy is a recent Sheridan graduate selected for Toon Boom Animation’s 2025 Ambassador Program. While they are new to Toronto’s animation industry, their body of work includes contributing as an animator on Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now? at Big Jump as well as a junior rigging artist on Zokie of Planet Ruby at Nelvana.

Their portfolio of detailed rigs can be found on their website. We had the chance to sit down with Amanda to discuss the journey from pursuing a career in fine art to learning the craft of rigging on a zany children’s cartoon, and what guidance they found helpful when developing a portfolio for landing their first studio role.

Rigging sample provided by Amanda Healy.

What brought you from the fine arts world towards a career in animation?

Amanda: I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons. I loved going to the movies. I love all those Disney Diamond Edition VHS’s. I'd inhale Don Bluth. I did a lot of fine arts growing up where I lived about twenty minutes out from Ringling College of Art and Design. They used to have elementary school programs where you'd go after school, and you'd draw fruit, and I'd go, “Well, this is boring. I don't want to draw fruit all day. I want to draw cartoons!”  

But I am very thankful for that experience. I actually did a two-year Fine Arts degree before going into animation, and I feel having that background gave me a lot of insight into figure drawing. Other base skills are very important, like balancing my colour. I think it's very easy to forget that drawing is important in animation.

I moved to Canada specifically to go to Sheridan. I'm originally from the United States. I was very fortunate to be the last group at Sheridan to actually do pencil-and-paper animation in my first year. After that we went right into all Toon Boom Harmony, all the time. I'm very thankful to Mario Positano and Sarah Wallace for getting me interested in rigging in the first place. 

At first I was like, “This is a lot of node spaghetti. I don't know about this.” But over time I really did fall in love with it. When I describe it to my friends and to people who don't work in animation, I say, “Did you ever build paper puppets when you were a kid, where you had the little thumbtacks and you'd cut out the little bits and you'd dangle them around?” 

What is it about rigging in particular that appeals to you?

Amanda: Personally, I think rigging is the perfect balance between being creative and being a problem solver. I love puzzles. I love building things. I love getting all technical with it, and rigs are, I think, the perfect intersection. I can work creatively. I can find these creative solutions. But I'm also not drawing all the time. 

And there's a certain freedom in rigging as well, where you really can just put your nose to the grindstone and just work. You don't have to worry about all the creative noise, if that makes sense. I know a lot of people, that's what they thrive on, but sometimes you just want to work.

Lia, the main character of Amanda Healy's thesis film.

I'd love to discuss the rigs in your portfolio. You have the main character of your thesis film, your Dungeons & Dragons character, and a delightful mini-Amanda for your title card.

Amanda: These are individual assignments that I did while I was in school. If employers want to see my work, I can give them the password to my studio work. So it's not the most current work that I have, but it is work that is not under any kind of NDA.

Looking back, I'm really proud of what I made. I was one of two people I know who was really interested in rigging out of my entire 250 student class. I remember she and I would be like, “Okay, but how'd you get your nodes to line up just like that?” It wasn’t until the end of the year that we made a little group chat with other people who were more interested in rigging. But I was the only person in my small group that was rigging-oriented. 

Rigging was like a couple weeks of the 2D applications class that I was in at the time, and that was an elective. So considering the amount of time that I had been taught, I'm quite proud of the work that I did. Something that meant a lot is that Sarah Wallace, who is an incredible teacher and mentor, gave us these amazing documents I still reference; about how to rig an eyeball, how to rig a leg, how to rig an arm, and how to make z-depth easy to do. 

My thesis film was less of a film as it was just a big rig demo. I was like, “I'm going to make a film that does what it needs to do, which is to demonstrate that I am good at rigging, so I can get hired as a rigger.” I’m very glad I did that. I got to show some that I'm capable of using basic skills. I can make a full turn for a character. I can make sure that the character animates. I can show that I know how to use masks. I know how to put these deformers on.

Showing that you can make a lightweight rig, showing that you can have something that animators can navigate easily, is important, and something I'm very glad was hammered into me quite a bit. That same principle applies to my next rig. That was on my D&D character. The assignment was a three-point turn rig that had a couple of swaps, and then I had to do an animation with it that showed that it could move between all three angles. This was my second time doing a rig that turned at that point. 

It was a vector rig as well. It wasn't a swap-driven rig. I mean, there are swaps for the mouth and the hands and feet. But everything else was a vector. It was also my first time using kinematic limbs and making sure that I had z-depth-friendly elements. 

Nix, a Dungeons & Dragons character adapted into a Harmony rig by Amanda Healy.

Your first job out of college was working on a Scooby-Doo production. How did that come about?

Amanda: My first project was my co-op at Sheridan, where I was very fortunate to work on Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now! 

I had been part of Big Jump's co-op program. I'm incredibly thankful for it, because I feel I learned a lot of basics. While you learn so much during college, you also can get very easily in over your head. When you have at least eleven classes a semester, it's very hard to specialize in anything.

At the end of [the Big Jump program], they said, “Hey, interns, we have a project that we want you all on,” and it ended up being Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now!, the CW special. I love Scooby-Doo, so that was extremely exciting for me. I got to do a couple of Shaggy and Scooby scenes as an animator. That was a bucket list item to check off right there.

Shaggy is such a fun character. The original animators really just nailed his walk cycle in that first series and they haven’t changed it much since.

Amanda: Oh my God, I think you're right! They did improve those sandwich effects and the way that his mouth got bigger a little every time. You can always grow, right?

Then, after Big Jump, you had the chance to work at Nelvana.

Amanda: Yes, Nelvana was the other studio that I worked with. I was on Zokie of Planet Ruby as a junior rigger, and that was really fantastic. I got to learn a lot from a really talented crew, and the show was very cute. I had a really good time working on it. 

Working on tween stuff has always been my dream. I get to say, “Hey, I worked on something that aired on Nickelodeon!”

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• Ready to see more of Amanda Healy's rigs? Be sure to visit their portfolio and give Amanda a follow on Instagram at @digitoid.
• Want to get started on a portfolio for your first studio role? Students may be eligible for up to 84% off on licenses for Storyboard Pro and Harmony.