Examples

Step 1
Draw each of the separate parts of your character. You should have head, body, arms and legs. Group your shapes as necessary so they are single shapes. Or even easier, just download the skeleton project file above and your skelton is already drawn.

Step 2
Move the pivot points of each of your shapes so that the pivot point is at the top joint where it will rotate.

Step 3
Select each shape and pin it to it's parent shape. Pin the hands to the arms, the feet to the legs, the arms, legs and head to the body. Here's how I remember it: The foot bone's connected to the leg bone, the leg bones connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bones connected to the hip bone. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones!

Showing all the linked bones

Step 4
Once you have connected all the bones together into a skelton, all the limbs will be connected and when you rotate the arm bone, for example, the hand bone will stay connected to it. So now arrange your skeleton into the position for your first frame.

Step 5
Move to another frame (remember: 24 frames a second is the default). Now move your skeleton into a new position. The bones will move smoothly from the last frame that it was moved. If you want it to start from a different frame, you will have to create a keyframe on that frame.

Step 6
Now preview your animation in your web browser. To upload it to YouTube or other video hosting site you will need to save it as a video (AVI) file so go to File > Export As... > AVI File. Choose a suitable video codec and away you go. You may find that you have to experiment with different codecs until you get a suitable quality. Next sign up to YouTube and upload your video. Don't forget to mention it was made with Express Animator!

Step 7, 8, 9....
There's no point in a character without a story, so think one up! "In a dark dark town, in a dark dark street, in a dark dark house, some skeltons lived..."