Hands - GatoGato

Focus was on expression and interaction (with things and bodyparts)

I have no idea how many these are, yeah, enough.

 

Sketches are more or less chronological.

First studies: 

getting loose, getting the construction more internalized, more variations of a hand against a surface or in interaction with an object. My focus here is somewhat on the importance of the wrist during different motions.

Page 8 is Al Hirschfeld didn't give me a lot to learn from.

Page 9 is Makani - Makani.deviantart.com

She's good with: Form of hands with solid construction and according to character - bony, fleshy, fat, strong, feminine, male etc.

Language of forms and curves (f.e. hooks for bonier hands, curves for softness, lenght of fingers, tapering at the end of fingers, knuckles, proportions of palm/fingers/wrist)

Study with webcam: 

I did two movies of myself, one with general gestures and a second one where I listened to a podcast and bursted in a mix of disgust (hands before mouth) and laughter.

First movie has automatic gestures (smoking, putting on a hat) but stays generic and boring.

Second movie with not-planned emotions works fantastics and gives a lot of spontaneus and thruthfull gestures. Bonus: cool dumb facial expressions (I didn't focus too much on the face).

In the first sketches I tried to group actions together (holding, face - hand interaction) but during the webcam sketches I like the idea of grouping emotions together a lot more. I'll go on with that from now on.

Next thing to do: Record myself during a Skype phone call to get a wider range of spontaneus gestures.

 

First page is Rebecca Sugar, Blousse's hands: 

line quality, loosenes, playful exaggeration. 

The hands have a certain rubbery, gay character that I enjoy and that I have in my own gestures. Loose construction.

Basics of animation principles, LoAs (lines of action) where I wouldn't expect them. I have to come back to her because there is more to her art that I don't understand yet.

Third page is Earl Oliver Hurst's elegant flowing feminine hands vs. Gazotti's supermassive male hands. This and the earlier Makani sketches gave me the kick to get a short research on the diversity of hands going on. 

I will have to go deeper into that because I feel that I haven't complete control and overview over this yet.

Own resaerch: Seeing the diversity in different hands - boney, muscular, fat, strong, soft, long, robust, starving etc.

Veins, loose or rough skin, hair, knuckles and the lack of them and what they mean for believability. The last page of the realistic hands has a stock photo of a viking man who has soft, featureless hands. Compare that to the hand of the gorilla-like hairy redfaced porn actor with the anchor tatto on his forearm who is far more viking than the soft shaved bland model - I like these things, I want to get a mental library of hand types going on.

Ren & Stimpy hands:

This is too much to handle for me. Seemingly simple hands with loose construction with massive ammount of design (the curves are awesomley organic and too complicated for me, I don't get them yet). Interaction and cooperation of hands with themselves, the gesture and the overall figure. Strong exagerrations (the pointing fingers). Contrasts in the form of the hands (square, round, open, fisted) and in the action (hold- pull). Lines of action work together or against each other. A line of action running through the arm and the finger.

This shows the importance of the overall expression of the figure to stray away from the generic hand.

There are too many complicated internalized rules, my head, too much to learn in these.

I'll need to go back to this.

 

George Carlin about saving the planet and a George Carling record from 1977.

Internalizing what I learned about composition and forms of hands, arms and shoulders from Ren & Stimpy.

Shoulder Forms, compositional forms, loA through hands, through arms, through shoulders, through eye-lines/finger points.

There's a neat one on page 3: generic upward curve in the line of action (green) and a sweet wave curve created through the hands (pink)

On the left he created a triangluar composition with his arm with a focus point on the slightly gay hand gesture to accent the word "aloof".

Going back to Rebecca Sugar.

I used mainly curves on Carlin, Rebecca uses different forms that sometimes don't flow at all.

First picture has chaotic confusion in the fingers. The use of different forms (round, square-ish, Ds or Wedges), curves (soft, hard, wiggly) on the overal hand.

(that's why I took the rough tired last picture with me, he looks confused and the hand isn't really readable)

Next goal:

100 for next sunday.

Focus for the next days:

- Interaction two hands-shoulders-head: gestures with a focal point on animation principles
- Language of form in the expression itself (how the type of line and form reflect the emotion of the character) and in the hand itself (a square hand of a man, the softer organic curves of a female hand etc.)

- Diversity in hands, different types of hand-characters

Edit: BIG IMAGES: the notes are mostly in German, sorry :C

http://imageshack.us/f/542/hands1kl.jpg/ 

http://imageshack.us/f/843/hands2kl.jpg/  

http://imageshack.us/f/28/hands3p.jpg/