The Puppet Tool

Imagine a spider made out of shape layers in which each leg is a stroke. Animating the legs moving would be pretty simple, right? Simply keyframe the stroke path. Now, imagine a spider that’s an image layer, such as a JPEG or PSD. How would you animate that? The answer: The Puppet tool. It’s a great way to bend limbs and add character to raster (that is, pixel-based) images.

Building a Puppet Rig

The technique of preparing an asset for animation is called “rigging.” Imagine you’re Jim Henson and you’ve just built a Kermit the Frog puppet. Rigging is the art of attaching a wire to Kermit’s hand to enable him to gesticulate.

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