knowledge of the skeleton in life drawing and animation

In drawing the human figure its all about simplifying the forms of the body, when put that way it doesnt sound too difficult but there are alot of muscles and bones in the human body and in different positions and poses the form of the muscles change. This is why it is very important to study the bones of the human figure because the skeleton is the framework or the armature of the drawn figure. For example if muscles are taken off the skeleton they don't have a defined form anymore whereas the bones will always keep their form regardless. This information is important for animation aswell as classical drawing, if not more so because a good knowledge of the skeletal structure of the human body will aid the animator in keeping characters solid and believable. Many animation characters are not drawn with accurate skeletal structure  because if they were every character would be roughly the same and it would be boring. However the character designers would ideally have had a solid knowledge of the skeletal structure because once you know the rules, you can then experiment and start to break them.