Asset warping in Adobe Animate

In this video I'm going to show you a new tool called the Asset Warp Tool.

So, here I have a character.

All of its parts are nested inside a symbol.

I'm going to double click, because this is where we're going to actually perform the animation.

And here in the Timeline you'll notice I have three different layers.

The MatchHead itself, this symbol here.

I have the Flame art itself.

And while we're at it let's name that.

And in the bottom layer is the Stick.

I'm going to lock the Stick layer and the MatchHead layer for now because we're not going to be editing those.

I'm going to convert those to outlines because I just want to concentrate visually on the flame itself.

So, the Asset Warp Tool is this icon here.

It's a little push pin icon.

And once selected all we need to do is click inside the artwork itself to start placing pins.

So, the first pin placement I'm going to make down here, basically where the flame connects with the matchstick.

And now this pin is represented here by the center dot and this outer dashed circle.

And you'll also notice a mesh has been applied to my shape.

So, let's create a few more additional pins.

I'm just going to click in the artwork where I know I'm going to want to control the artwork.

And that should pretty much do it.

And now the fun part where we get to animate this shape.

And In the flame layer that contains our flame artwork I'm going to create a keyframe on every other frame.

And so now in this second keyframe here on frame 3, this is where I'm going to start to manipulate my mesh using the Asset Warp Tool.

So, I'm going to start here and let's make the tip of this flame go in the opposite direction.

So, you can click directly on that central point and move it to a new location.

And if you hover over the outer dashed circle, you'll be able to click and drag and rotate the artwork.

And repeating this technique, you can manipulate your mesh shape.

And now that I'm kind of happy with the artwork on that keyframe I want to create an additional keyframe here on frame 5.

And I'm going to continue editing the shape in unpredictable ways.

Sometimes it even helps to study a flame like even light a candle and watch how the flame flickers and try to repeat the randomness.

Let's create a couple more keyframes and play with this mesh using the Asset Warp Tool a little bit more.

And you can see how quick and easy it is to deform your shape in very predictable ways.

You can even right click and apply a Classic Tween to the keyframes that contain your mesh.

So, the Asset Warp Tool is a great new feature, which actually cuts down a lot of drawing time since you can manipulate a single shape in so many different ways.