Warp, Squash, and Skew
Bones bend a figure at its joints, but sometimes you want to push a whole piece of art around: squash a ball as it lands, stretch a character as they leap, tilt a sign into perspective. That is the Warp tool. It puts a four-corner cage around your art, and you drag the corners on the stage to reshape the lot. This page covers what warp does well, the one limit it has, and how to pair it with bones.
1What warp is for
Squash and stretch is the oldest trick in animation: things flatten when they hit and stretch when they fly, and that deformation sells weight and speed. Bones cannot do this on their own because they bend at joints rather than reshaping a whole piece. The Warp tool fills that gap by letting you deform an entire layer at once, so a landing thumps, a jump zings, and a rigid drawing suddenly has some give to it.
2Find the Warp tool
Select the layer you want to deform, then pick Warp from the Layer tools in the Tool Options bar. A cage appears around your art with a handle at each corner, and the on-screen hint says it plainly: drag the four corners on the stage. That cage is the whole interface. Everything you do with warp is a matter of dragging those four handles to new positions.
3The four-corner cage
The cage is a rectangle of four corners, and the art inside it stretches to follow wherever you drag them. Pull one corner out and that side of the art stretches toward it; push two corners together and the art squeezes between them. Because all four corners are independent, you can make trapezoids, leaning shapes, and pinched forms. The art always fills the shape you make with the corners, like a photo pinned at its four corners to a moving frame.
4Squash on a landing
For a landing, squash the art flat for a frame or two on impact. Drag the two top corners down and the two bottom corners out slightly, so the piece goes shorter and wider, as if the weight drove it into the ground. Then release it back toward its normal shape over the next few frames as it recovers. That brief flatten-and-recover is what gives a landing its thud and makes the character feel like it has real mass.
5Stretch on a leap
A leap or a fast move wants the opposite: stretch. Drag the corners so the art gets taller and thinner along the direction of travel, elongating it as if speed were pulling it. A stretched frame or two during the fastest part of a jump reads as zip and energy, and it smooths the motion so the piece does not look like it is teleporting between poses. Return to normal proportions as the movement slows.
6Skew and tilt into perspective
The four corners also let you skew, which is brilliant for perspective and lean. Offset the top corners sideways from the bottom ones and the art slants, so a running character can lean into the sprint or a falling sign can tip as it topples. Make the far edge shorter than the near edge and you fake a simple perspective, handy for a banner turning away from camera or a card flipping. Skew adds attitude that a straight scale never could.
7Reset warp when you overshoot
Deforming freely means it is easy to go too far and mangle your art. When that happens, use Reset warp to snap the cage back to its original rectangle and return the piece to its undeformed shape. It is a clean escape hatch: no undoing corner by corner, just one button back to square one. Reach for it whenever a warp gets away from you and you want a fresh start.
8Key the warp over time
A warp only becomes squash and stretch when it changes across frames. With Auto-key on, move the playhead to the impact frame and warp the art there, then move to the recovery frame and warp it back toward normal. The studio keys the corner positions and blends between them. Space these tightly, because squash and stretch live on just a frame or two: a slow warp looks like melting, a quick one looks like a hit.
9Anticipation and follow-through
Warp shines on the frames around an action, not just the action itself. Add a small squash of anticipation just before a jump, as the character crouches to spring, then the stretch on the way up, then a squash again on the landing. This squash, stretch, squash rhythm is the classic bounce, and warping the whole piece is the fastest way to get it. The eye reads that little wind-up and pay-off as life and intention.
10The limit: a four-corner cage only
Warp has one clear limit. It is a four-corner cage and nothing more. There is no free-form deform mesh, no grid of many points you can push around to make a localised bulge or a rippling wave in the middle of a piece. If you have used a dense NxM deform mesh in a desktop animation app, warp is not that. It reshapes the whole layer through its four corners, which is powerful for gestural squash and stretch but cannot do fine, localised bending.
11Shape big deformations with corners and bones
So how do you get bending the cage cannot do? You split the job. Use Warp for the whole-piece squash, stretch, and skew, and use bones for the localised bends: a bone-mesh part bends smoothly at a joint where a corner cage never could. A bouncing character might warp for the overall squash on landing while its rigged legs and hair bend with bones on top. Corners for the big gesture, bones for the detail, is the working recipe.
12Do not over-warp
Because warp reshapes everything at once, heavy deformation can smear and distort your art badly, and readable characters turn into blobs. Use warp in short, punchy bursts on the extreme frames and let the art sit at its true proportions the rest of the time. If a viewer can see the warp on a held pose, it is too strong or held too long. The trick is meant to pass by in a blink, felt on the impact and gone the next moment.
13What good warp looks like
Good warp is felt as weight and speed, not seen as distortion. The landing thumps because the piece flattened for an instant, the leap zips because it stretched, and the run has attitude because it leans, yet on any held frame the art looks perfectly normal. It works with your bones and dynamics rather than instead of them. When your animation gains impact and bounce but nobody can point to a warped drawing, the tool is doing its job.
Add squash and stretch
Grab the corners, key the extremes. Links into the app. Saved on this device.
Warp questions
Pick Warp for the layer, then on the impact frame drag the top corners down and the bottom corners out so the art gets shorter and wider. Key it there with Auto-key on, then key it back toward normal a frame or two later as it recovers.
No. Warp is a four-corner cage, not a free-form deform mesh. There is no grid of interior points to push around for a local bump. Warp reshapes the whole piece through its corners; for localised bending, use bones instead.
You have over-warped. Warp belongs in short bursts on the extreme frames, held for a frame or two, then released back to normal proportions. If the warp is visible on a held pose, it is too strong or held too long. Ease the corners back, or use Reset warp.
Use Reset warp to snap the cage back to its original rectangle and return the art to its undeformed shape in one step. If you only want to soften an over-warp rather than clear it, nudge the corners back by hand instead.
Scale resizes the whole piece uniformly or along one axis while keeping it rectangular. Warp moves each of the four corners independently, so you can make trapezoids, leans, and perspective tilts that Scale cannot, as well as non-uniform squash and stretch.
Yes, and you often should. Use warp for whole-piece squash, stretch, and skew, and use bones for localised joint bends. A character can warp for a landing squash while its rigged legs and hair bend with bones at the same time.
It is changing too slowly across frames. Squash and stretch live on just a frame or two at the extremes. Space your warp keys tightly so the deformation snaps rather than oozes. A slow warp reads as melting; a fast one reads as impact.
Your art has give and bounce
You learned to grab the four corners and squash on a landing, stretch on a leap, and lean into a run, all while knowing exactly where the cage stops and bones take over. That give is what turns stiff motion into animation with real weight. Next, get flowing, tapered shapes like tails and hair bending beautifully with drawn shapes and smart binding.