When doing a joint-based rig it's quite common to have a setup where a small number of controls drive the cv's of a nurb curve which has a joint on it for each span. Here is an example from one of Josh Sobel's rigs. Each joint is attached to a curve and each cv of the curve is driven by a control. There's often extra stuff and the exact setup varies but that is the basic core concept. A lot of times riggers choose to use a nurbs curve like this because it ensures that they g