Getting started with the Bone Tool (Adobe Animate CC)
If you’re an aspiring animator who’s had to resort to teaching themselves animation instead of waiting for an open spot to take in a class, you’ve probably been wondering how you can work a bit more professionally and make something move fluently. Luckily, there are more ways to animate an object in Adobe Animate CC than just frame-by-framework or translating an idle character awkwardly to the other side of your canvas.
Such as this useful little fellow:
This is what’s known as the Bone Tool; it is well advised to get acquainted with it. If you’re looking to make fluid motions with your 2D characters, this little marvel will become one of the best friends you’ll make in Adobe Animate.
1. What is the Bone Tool?
Before we get started, let’s understand what this feature actually is. The Bone Tool can be located in the toolbox tab in Adobe Animate CC. You can find it by opening the toolbox menu (Window > Toolbox) and clicking on the bone icon like shown here below:
This tool is a kinetics motion mechanic used to add more definite structure to an object or symbol. To put it in simpler terms, you are practically constructing and fitting a digital skeleton under your object. After all, it’s called the bone tool for a reason.
2. Animation Strategies
If you’re not willing to animate through tedious frame-by-frame placements, the Bone Tool makes a great alternative for detailed, believable motions. It works especially well for giving more depth and weight to your characters and creatures, enabling them to perform more fluid movements in your animation. Be aware though that the Bone Tool is very flexible, and you’ll need to place the joints accordingly if you want to get more precise movements without having anything clip into itself. Otherwise, you’ll risk breaking the immersion of the entire action through jarred posing. Imagine if someone waved to you like this:
Unless you’re looking to incorporate horror-based elements or themes involving graphic distortion into your project, it’s best to keep your structure well-structured, such as this:
Remember that you are essentially building a skeleton, so it is best to follow off an anatomically correct skeletal outline for reference when animating something like an animal, a human, or a specific body part. This is especially crucial if you’re not a proficient in anatomically accurate drawing and are going for a more realistic approach in your projects. So, now that you know a little more about the what to do and how to do it, let’s figure out how this friendly looking arm was created. Here is a breakdown on how to make a waving arm.
HOW TO ANIMATE: Hand Waving
STEP 1: Draw Your Object
The object, also known as the symbol if grouped with other objects or animated through a tween (a basic translation animation) or bone tool manipulation, spells the fundamental component to the entire animation that you desire to make. You can’t animate if you don’t have anything to work with!
So, we’ll start off with drawing the arm and hand. There is no right or wrong way to draw it, as everyone has their own unique style. However, when just starting out with the bone tool, it’s advised to keep to a basic design, especially if you’re trying to make the object look more real. If you aren’t confident in your drawing abilities, that’s okay. Although it certainly helps in terms of creating appealing visuals, you don’t need to know how to draw well in order to animate well. In truth, it comes down to the timing and positioning of an object that really gives the animation it’s magic, not the actual look of the design itself.
It’s recommended that when drawing digitally that you should have an electronic drawing device at your disposal, such as a drawing tablet. Using a mouse can get strenuous, overwhelming, and at times, just downright messy. When drawing a bit more realistically, you should always try to go off a reference, as it helps with placing the bone tool joints accordingly. One good way is to start drawing shapes to recreate the entire image as a whole, so it’s alright if you’ve conjured up some incoherent, bulbous set of blobs like these:
The point is that you develop a base template for your object(s). After that, you can then smooth out the lines, add in details, and paint on some color however way you’d like until you’d get something a bit cleaner like this:
Now you’re ready to move on to the next step: placing the bone joints.
STEP 2: Build Your Skeleton
Now you can finally use the beloved bone tool to add structure to this arm we’ve drawn. We can spare the hand from the bone tool; certain objects call for certain types of animation tools, and not all of them can be animated so interchangeably save for the most knowledgeable, highly skilled animators who have the experience to do so. A body part with more direct, broader movements like an arm can be animated easily through both tweening or using the bone tool. On the contrary, animating something like a dexterous hand is best reserved for tweening or frame-by-framework.
An arm is relatively simple to construct for a skeleton, as it really requires just two to three bone joints. To make a skeleton, you simply just select the arm and drag the bones across it. These “bones” will pop up as purple lines which will act as the ligaments to your object; it is the skeletal outline for your arm. Along with these ligaments come joints, which act as anchored points that you can interact with to manipulate the arm and actually make it move. You’ll want to start your skeleton at the base of your object, where the arm won’t be moving, or at least not as fluently. This will produce a joint with a red-line dot in the middle. This can be referred to as the anchor point; this is the base foundation that keeps your skeleton firm as you move it. It’s best placed at the joining points of a body, like a thigh of a leg attaches to a torso, or in this case, a bicep connecting up to the shoulder.
Step 3: Pose your Object
This is the final step towards animating your skeletal construction. After creating a skeleton on your object, it will make the current layer it lives on obsolete, creating a new layer on your timeline called an Armature Layer; this can be identified by the green highlighted frame bar located in your timeline:
Now you can tweak your arm’s movement by adding in poses into your armature layer. Don’t worry, poses aren’t anything new; they’re essentially the armature layer’s version for a keyframe. Posing is simple; merely place a pose somewhere on your timeline for the armature layer, and your arm will move accordingly to the new position you’ve place it.
You can space out your poses to give the allusion of speed it’s moving at; the shorter the length, the faster your object will move, and vice versa. Be sure to make sense of timing and positioning to help give that extra “weight” to your object; add in another pose a short distance from the previous one and position your object in a slight nod or angle from the preceding pose (you can monitor this using the Onion Skin Tool, located at the bottom of your timeline in the playback options tab. This gives the impression of a “bounce” to your object, and is useful for those little details in behavioral actions that go the extra mile such as breathing, colliding with a surface, or in this case, waving a hand. Note that putting in extra object parts, like the hand, through regular tweening will only help stem more life into your creation and end up with result like this:
Congratulations; now you know how to utilize the Bone Tool! Be sure to explore and play around with this whenever you can, as you will only improve in time with practice and a better understanding. Best of luck to you and your future projects!