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James Nethery on rigging Norm in Harmony Premium

by Erin Hynes

24 March 2023
Norm Character rig created by James Nethery, demonstrating Master Controllers in Harmony 22 Premium.

James Nethery is a rigging artist and animator, Toon Boom Ambassador, and founder of Raging Viking Productions LLC. His production credits include animation direction on The Cyanide & Happiness Show, lead character rigging on The Prince and animation on City Island.

Recently James shared a recorded demo of his character ‘Norm’ in action. Norm was rigged using Toon Boom Harmony 22 and is ready to be animated. Later this year, the character will appear in a web series that James is currently working on. We caught up with James to learn about his work as a rigging artist, what inspired the character Norm, and more details about Norm. 

James recorded a two-minute video of Norm in action, inside Harmony 22 Premium.

Can you tell us about how your animation career started, and a bit about your career so far? 

James: I was born in California while my dad was working for Disney in Burbank. Then in the 90s, we moved so my dad could work as an animator at Disney Animation Studios in Florida. I grew up around animation, and my dad was hugely supportive when I decided I wanted to work in animation too.

My career started with school. I took an online program called Animation Mentor. After the program, I began freelancing out of Orlando. I got my first freelance job off of the Toon Boom jobs board, actually. 

That first job went well and led to more freelance work. At the start I worked a lot for a show called Cyanide and Happiness. About a year into freelance work, I took a test for the show Archer, with Floyd County Productions. The test went well, and so I ended up moving to Atlanta to work on Archer. 

I stayed on Archer for about a year, and then landed a full-time animation directing gig with LowBrow Studios. So I stayed with them for a few years, bouncing around to various projects they had on the go. I did a lot of directing and helped them get their Harmony pipeline together. Following that I worked with two more studios before going back to freelance, which is what I’m doing now.

At LowBrow Studios, James had the opportunity to work as an animation director on Adam Ruins What We Learned in School.

Could you describe what a typical day as a rigging artist is like? 

James: I’ll usually have a list of assignments for the week, and so my day starts with reviewing that. Sometimes the list includes just one main character, or it could be a bunch of incidental characters.  

I then talk to the lead or director about what that character will do to see if there’s anything special I should know about. Special poses, or if it has a mouth chart or pans. I take all that and bring it into Harmony to start rigging. From there I’ll send it back for feedback, and there may be some notes that come back, which is all part of the process.

The bulk of my time is spent building the actual rig. What that means might change from day to day, depending on where I am in the process. Like on one day I might be doing artwork, and on another I might be adding deformers.

What inspired the design for your character, Norm?

James: It kinda started back in 2020. My friend Adam DiTerlizzi and I were working on a short for an animation contest. We came up with the design for Norm while working on our entry. We wanted Norm’s design to be simple, and based on old Hanna-Barbera and UPA cartoons. 

Although we didn’t follow through with the contest, I really liked the character and design. So I wanted to see if I could do something with it. I ended up working with another friend of mine on a series concept that uses Norm. 

Tell us about the Norm rig! What are you proud of?

James: When you go into the node view, you’ll see that Norm’s rig is pretty clean. It’s mostly standard stuff. Everything is broken up into individual pieces, which makes it really easy to navigate the node view. If I need to go and hide his arms, for example, I can just select the group of nodes. 

I keep his master controllers in a different window. If I want him to look in another direction, for example, I have a little handle that I can pull around to pose him. I can also turn his torso around. Or his legs. This helps to create some 3D movement. Whenever I use the handle to pose, all the master controllers change (or keyframe) with it. 

The Norm rig is fairly standard as far as rigs go, he’s very similar to most characters I’ve worked on. It’s all hierarchy. I think the thing that most differentiates him is his master controller setup. On many productions I’ve worked on, we didn’t have the time to implement that kind of setup.

What’s your favourite detail?

James: Norm has a lot of master controllers in his head. A few years ago this wasn’t super typical, but it’s increasingly becoming normal to find lots of master controllers in characters. I really like the master controllers on his head because they make it very easy to quickly block out some nice animation that looks 3-dimensional, and not flat. Thanks to the controllers I can achieve that look in a pretty short amount of time. 

You mentioned on LinkedIn that you enjoyed implementing the master controllers for Norm. Can you share a bit about your process?

James: Sure! I started out by designing the full turn, and then I moved on to designing his head tilts, like up and down. Sometimes when I’m rigging I’ll do that before, with a model sheet, but for Norm I just went in and eyeballed it. Once all that preproduction stuff is done, it’s very easy to just go into Harmony’s grid controller and select all the up and down positions, side to side positions, torso rotations, and to add a slider. 

You can use master controllers for just about anything these days. You could use them for blinks or for hands. There’s not a whole lot that you can’t do. 

Do you have any tips for people who are just starting out with using master controllers?

James: I would start by watching video tutorials online. There’s lots of them out there, but I really benefited from Matt Watts’ Youtube channel. He has a free Baked Potato Rigging course and it’s really worth watching all his videos. They’re a time commitment, but the videos are super in-depth. That’s where I learned how to do master controllers. 

A close look at the number of poses for Norm’s head inside Harmony’s Master Controller Grid Wizard.

What features of Harmony do you find most useful in character design?

James: When I came over from Flash animation, discovering auto patches was a huge breakthrough. I still use them today for just about everything. And of course, the deformers are amazing. I use those everywhere. I also really like the new tool where you can draw and actually see the texture. That’s an amazing feature in Harmony 22.

This is not really rigging-related, but I also really like the Animate Pencil Line Texture tool. I’ve been using that in a couple projects to get a nice line boil effect. Lastly, I have to mention the node view. It’s very easy to navigate the way it’s set up. It can definitely be intimidating for people new to using it. But once you get it, it’s very efficient to use.

Is there anything you’ve learned from the process of making Norm that has changed or informed how you approach character design?

James: I always knew that making a rig animator-friendly was important, but creating Norm really drove that point home for me. It’s great to create something that looks good in a demo, but if you can’t animate it, or it’s too heavy, it’s really not worth much. 

My philosophy is to make rigs that any animator can open up and use right away, without it being intimidating, or difficult to use. Everything in the rig should be standardized, whether you’re doing a simple character or a complex character.

What’s next for Norm, and are there any other projects you’d like to share? 

James: Norm will be in a series that I’m working on which is going to drop sometime this year. I’ll definitely be promoting that when it’s out. We’ve got voices all recorded and I’m now working on rigs and the first bit of animation. I’m excited to be using Norm for something!

  • Interested in seeing more of James Nethery’s work? Be sure to visit James’ website for animation and rigging samples.
  • Want to keep up-to-date with Raging Viking Productions? Follow the studio on Twitter.
  • Ready to rig your own characters? Artists can download a 21-day trial of Harmony Premium.
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