How would you do something like this with bones?

Hi Chris,
I haven't watched this course, however, everything is possible to do bones (in fact something like this should be rigged in bones in my opinion).

I can't give you step by step instructions for this but to point you in the general direction, here's some notes.

-create a bone for each empty.
-geometry parts can be parented to the bones instead of the empties.
-any parenting shown with the empties, will be the same on the bones
-turn on the bone axes to help with any constraint differences (bones have a different default orientation to empties)

-watch out for any dependency cycles. Like if the geo is dependant on the armature, then the armature can't be dependant on the geo.
(I mention this because I think Chris Khun uses a shrink wrap constraint and this will cause issues). To work around this you might need a second armature which is dependant on the control armature. That way the control armature is at the top of the hierarchy and there won't be a dependency cycle


I hope this helps you out.