[Fred Flick Stone]

I posted this in another thread by Kebab, but I thought this stuff was important enough to give it its own thread...I will try and get some images up in a day or two, but accessing my geocities account seems to be quite useless at the moment...

I will give you a few tips that may make your life a bit easier. I would accompany it with photos, but my geocities account is not accessible for some reason, and I have no other way of posting at the moment...
Here we go
The hands, along with the face should recieve careful attention. for one thing, aside from the head, they are usually the only other exposed part of the body. Secondly, they are equally as expressive in gesture, emotion and action. Along with these, because of the complexity of joints and masses and planes, the hands can and usually are the hardest thing to learn on the entire human form.
THe first thing that most artists in training do wrong is that they make the hands too small. Here is where the importance of head drawing comes in. If you know how to proportion the head into its proper units of measure, then you have also determined the units of measure for the hand too. If you place your hand over your face, the tip of the fingers will start at the brow line, and the palm will end at the chin. This is your measuring device for the hand. I hope the importance of figure drawing is really starting to sink in now. If you can draw the figure, you can essentially draw anything. For two reasons, one, you have studied diligently in knowing that the human form consists of masses of solid shapes, and two, if you have a figure in a room with stuff a figure would use, you have the figure as a measuring device to judge all your objects, and you know that these objects, like the figure, have mass too.

Off the subject, back to the point-
Composing the hand
THe hand has two masses, that of the thumb part, and that of the hand proper, or, the rest of the hand.
The double rows of the carpel bones, or wrist bones are mrtised, or fused to the hand, making one mass. The wrist is not a floating mass, or ball joint like those of the wooden art dummies. So, the hand always moves with the wrist. Twice as wide as it is thick, the wrist gets a bit smaller where it joins the arm. You can also think of the wrist as a universal joint because of its side-to-side and up and down motion as well as all of its rotary movement.
THe center of the body of the hand is slightly below the body of the arm. For example, lay your arm and hand flat on a table, palm down, and notice that the wrist does not touch the table top. You will see the mass of the wrist rises from the hand at a slight angle where it joins the arm.
The thumb side of the hand is larger than the side of the little finger. The hand is broader at the fingers than at the wrist: however, at the wrist it is deeper. also notice on your own hand that the palm is longer than the back of the hand.
The thumb is set into the palm by an independent and highly mobile "ball of the thumb", giving it a great range of movement, independent from the rest of the hand.
In the palm of the hand most of the modeling is caused by a system of cushions and pads, nicely "upholstered together. On the front of the thumbs and fingers, as well as a considerable area of the palm, the substance built upon the bony foundation is literally padding.
The fingers all taper, with the middle finger, being the longest, forming the apex of the mass. Each finger itself tapers, with a tendency to converge toward the middle finger.
Measured outside, the length of the thumb equals the length of the middle finger. The body of the thumb is heavier than the other fingers, but, but unlike them, only the last joint tapers.
The sections of the fingers are more square than they would seem at first glance, with the last section containing the nail being quite triangular in shape, the nail with the flesh on either side forming its base.
You will do well to memorize the anatomy of the hand and fingers for if you know the bone construction of the ahnd, you will never have trouble in drawing it with character and expression.
It is important to know the joints-their degree of limitation and movement. the first joint of the thumb and the first two joints of the fingers are hinge joints- movement is limited to up and down, not side to side or rotational. Fully extended, the topmost joint of each finger is bent very slightly backwards. The lower joints of the fingers and the lower joint of the thumb will bend forward to an acute angle, while the upper joints or finger tips cannot bend even to a right angle. Review that really quickly the top two joints of all the fingers and the thumb are hinge joints, 90 degree motion only. the lower joint of the fingers and thumb, as well as the wrist are ball joints.
You never need be at a loss for models of hands to study. Even when drawing, you have another hand to serve in that capacity at any time and as faithfully as you choose. The addition of a mirror in front of you in which to reflect your free hand will give you an infinite variety of poses to choose from.

1. To draw the hand in action, first step is spacing and placing. You want to sketch in the action and approximate location of the hand, fitting each part as it appears.
2. Next solidify, or construct the shapes-the block method of drawing the hand is of great assistence in defining the planes and surfaces of the hands and fingers.
3. Next start to add the details. Carefully add the details of the hand and fingers erasing the first two steps as you go, and as they are no longer necessary, or they have already served their purpose.
4. Finally, add the tones, or light and dark planes. Reflective light applies here, so long as the shot calls for it.

Memorize this stuff, get an anatomy book, and study. You will never stop studying the hand as you will probably never draw the same hands in the same pose twice. Every shot is a new lesson in hand construction, and a new journey or exploration into a great adventure of expression.
Again, the hands are equally as important as the face. They require equal importance of attention and study as the head.

Hope this helps out a bit, as I said, I will attempt posting some images with this when Geocities allows me to get to my pages again.

[DeathbyDuplicity]

Hey aren't you like the Devil or something? I mean you know a lot of shit man, and err um?....Your not even afraid to share your personel secrets. So um....are ya? Are you the Serpant? heheheheh! He's the serpant I knew it! I knew it! That's why I told that kid to follow his lead.....hehheheh!

[n8]

dang...thats alota infor just for the hand...
but just say you wanted to draw somebodys unko hands like my friend...hes fingers are like double jointed eveywhere!!....hes quite a freek if u ask me....ummm..yeah...thanx for info =)

[TeAnne]

I will be back to read ALL of this.

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[Thorn]

Thank you Fred.

I always read all your posts with great interest. After mulling over your 'fundamentals' tutorial I realised that I needed to practice/practice/practice modelling. Something in what I've been doing has been bugging me for ages, and I quite couldn't work out what was wrong until I read through your tut stuff.

Anyway, thanks again. Your posts help heaps.

[Rinaldo]

Hey fred, I've noticed that Hogarth says the ring and index fingers are equal in length. But on my hands for one the ring is noticably longer. I know that there is never any real posability of a precise definition of measurment, but I was wondering what you have found in your experience.

Hogarth has too many damn rules

[Fred Flick Stone]

RInaldo-That is Hogarth's big failing, he makes rules out of things that are really random in nature. You can put an ideal on something, and that is what a lot of this is about, but you can't call it a rule. I hope he mentions that somewhere in his writing, I just couldn't get through it all. Too much hot air, not enough fact to bite on...BUT, he does have many valid points that have been printed, if youcan take them in small doses and use your best judgement, you can get a lot out of his stuff. But you have to already kinda know where he is coming from to evaluate it correctly...That newer water color you posted was beautiful too. Have you heard of Shirow Masamune? I am sure you have if you enjoy comics. He, before he went too digital for his own good, used to do these wonderful pages in water color, then scan them and work the watercolor colors into a more slick type look, offsetting the characters from the backgrounds slightly, like animation does. It was a really neat technique. If I can find this one story in particular that was published in penthouse comics, I Will post some of the pages to show you the look. I think this could be something you could play around with, trying to integrate the two mediums to make a more complex single image.
CHeers...

[Rinaldo]

Hey fred. I totaly agree with you on hogarth, I've got all the books. but he just talk's so damn much. Have you seen the one on fabric (think it's called Dynamic Drapery) There are some good ideas but it really falls down in some areas. especialy when he tries to draw piles of sheets and stuff like that.

Yes I am well versed in Shirow.
I am the proud owner of both Intron depot 1 and 2. I don't think there's anyhing in there about watercolour comic pages tho. Man that guy is a nut. He was messing around with textures on a colour photocopier before he was working on computer. He's insane. My one crit is that he seems to put too much into his pictures. I mean the pencils are beatiful and the marker sketch is even better, just so full of life, but the finished picture has so much colour and texture that it sorta looses me. It may be that japanese are more acostomed to this sorta thing. thier packaging is always full on and the cities are just full of flashing lights and advertising. (a far cry from Australia where we ride to work on Kangaroos through the scrub) couldn't resist
I tend to follow the "complex picture - simple colour scheme" and vica versa rules.
But I have noticed that a lot of japanese stuff is just so full on"

On the subject of japanese artists who work in watercolour. Do you know of Yoshitaka Amano. He is responsible for the conceptuial stuff on Final Fantasy (he played less of a role on 7,8). His style is very lose and he's not a big follower of anatomy. but you know how popular FF is. and a large proportion of that popularity is due to the way it looks.
His composition is very good, very art nouveau. but very powerfull. If you don't know of him sing out and I'll give my scanner a bit of a work out

turning over the watercolour/digi thing in my head



[This message has been edited by Rinaldo (edited July 13, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Rinaldo (edited July 13, 2000).]

[Fred Flick Stone]

Got his stuff too. I think I am always on the prowl for good art. I agree with the Japanese overflowering their stuff with too much damn glitter and such. It knida goes with the territory though. Ever walk down one of their streets? I only have in videos my friends shot, but they look just like their art, controlled chaos...I worked for a kookie artist who was actually quite famous for his bit of a stint, Christian Reece Lassen. God what a kook he was. But marketing made him a big star in Japan. His paintings resemble all that flash in the pan crap. He works exclusively from, now get this, projections of fish photos from national geographic and ocean realm magazine. Go look at his book, they shuld never have made it. Once you compile all the work into one body all the repetition starts to blair out very loud...poor sap, he still makes millions every year, but I don't see how. Much like Thomas B Kinkade, the painter of crap, but that's a whole other gripe...
I also like alot of Kia Asamia's watercolor peices, and of course Haruhiko Mikimoto, Macross master...these guys handle watercolor insanelike...blows my mind...

I actually have a very good watercolor technique book printed in the fifties, but Francis has it right now or I would tell you the title to go find it. Lots of techniques, many I don't see people who do watercolors even use anymore.

Francis, you out there? What was the name of that book?

Also, you have to have all of John Singer Sargents books, especially the three printed on just his watercolor works. The best damn water colorist I think that ever was. Oh, and he rarely if ever, used white...
and look at Andres Zorn. He was the Sargent of the Netherlands? I can't remember where he was from now...Argh, brain dead, oh well, he lived during Sargent's time, his work was on par with sargent, and the beauty of his work was that he rarely ever used more than three colors with black and white, his famous pallette is Venetian red, yellow ochre, lamp black and flake white. You can get every color in the rainbow with these four paints. Those colors will not be vibrant, but will be their true color, harmonious to the rest of the image...
Anyway, gotta get to work,
good luck...

[nori]

Whoohoo! I didn't even read it yet cause I have to goto school now.. but.. WHOOHOO! I suck at drawing hands.

[Spimm]

What would this messageboard be without Fred?
I mean I am not an artist yet, but I'm studying all techniques and, man, your writings help me so much! I just don't know how anyone can have such a knowledge of arts and stuff.

Btw. I am from Finland and I'd love to hear what do you have to say about a Finn production Max Payne. I understood that they used alot of pictures and painted on 'em with watercolors...

[samdragon]

Hey Fred, I have some of Bridgeman's examples of hands that may help, I'll try to post them soon, unless you had something else in mind.

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VISIT SAMDRAGON'S HOME

[Fred Flick Stone]

POst what you think would help. I had other images in mind, but anything helps...

[Rinaldo]

Ahhh... and I thought I had a pretty good little art book collection going. I've got a way to go it seems

I unfortunatly live at the arse end of the world as far as getting ahold of stuff goes (even if it's new let alone something rare)
but I'll give it a shot
(man if I ever get a credit card, watch out!)

The worst thing about artists who do the same thing over and over agin, is that some make it. they find this one thing that is just fucking amazing, and they just get hung up on it. their too scared to do anyhing else and they just keep on pumping it out. then the patent it, and pay other people to do it.
You see it in comics a lot.
I sort of got disenchanted with the whole comic thing after realising that if I did ever make it I'd have to keep doing whatever it was that everyone liked.
Dunno what that had to do with anything

I think that a lot of manga artists understnd design a lot better than western comic artists. I am so often tempted to buy manga comics just for the covers.
This doesn't just go for the cover's tho, take a peek inside something like Blade of the Imortal (Hiroaki Samura). It's like a movie in there, the motion is superb.
Another good manga artist is Akira Toriyama.
There's so much to learn from manga and Anime but people just seem to rip off the vague character style and call it "Manga".
I have a japanese friend, and there are all sorts of interesting things about japanese and drawing. People always stereotype manga as sort of violent and slightly pornographic. but Manga is everywhere in japan, I've seen cookbooks done in manga. Pretty much everyhing instructional is in comic form. Textbooks, manuals, everything. I've even seen a bilogy text book with these little guys, eyes as big as their hands, pointing at and talking about the intestinal system and the lungs. it's pretty funny stuff.
Dunno what this has to do with anything either, once I start I just don't shut up I guess


"projections of fish photos from national geographic and ocean realm magazine"

Haha.. that's some funny shit

I think I have to go to sleep. as most of you people are going off to work and stuff like that, my clock reads 3:50 am
(and it's the 14th)...... I still have trouble getting my head around that

[AliasMoze]

Ha, ha. Fred, I've also had a career of twists and turns, as I've mentioned to you before. The cool thing about design-based illustration is that it teaches you to fuse the two together (IMO). I was also a skater when I was 12-14, a period which had a huge impact on me. Now I'm about as straight as mister rogers.

On the subject of Manga/Anime, I'd have to say that I really like some of the Manga I've seen. The best of them have great design and storytelling skills. But, like anything, there's also a great deal of crap out there. Luckily, we Americans tend to get the best of the best when it comes to import. I love Battle Angel and rags of that calliber.

But I'm not a huge fan of Anime. I freakin love Akira, but most of the other stuff I don't care for. The Japanese certainly accept animation as an artform more than Americans, but I wish they focused more on character animation, instead of effects. They can animate the hell out of machinery and other technical things, but Anime tends to be poor in terms of character animation.

Anyway, it's neat to hear about other artist's influences and lives.

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AliasMoze
:) :) :) :)
"That activates my hilarity unit."

[Rinaldo]

AliasMoze- Have you seen any Miyazaki stuff.
My favorite animation is Porco Rosso and it's by Miyazaki. he's also done stuff like Princess mononoke (shody spelling i'm sure)
You also have to take into account that most Anime budjets are significantly smaller than what Disney put's into a flik.
I spoke to Kevin Altieri (think that's his name) the guy who did the Pearl Jam Evolution clip and the Gen 13 movie. He was a big fan of Miyazaki. As was his wife who worked at Dreamworks.
Miyazaki does crazy stuff. I think he took a hand to like 60% of the frames in one of his movies (he has bandaids on his fingers all the time).
Anime looks a bit stiff I think becase they don't use as much squash and stretch as Disney do.

Hell at least it doesn't have singing

[AliasMoze]

Rinaldo,
I've seen some of Miyazaki's stuff. It's very good, no doubt. My comments about Japanese character animation are general. The animation is much more limited than American animated features and the approach doesn't focus on characters. Again, the mechanical stuff in japanese toons is awesome, way ahead of the American equivalents.

I'm not dissing Anime. Working in American traditional animation, I know many great animators who have strong japanese influences.

I realize that Anime is huge and common in Japan, so not every movie can be a masterpiece. The stories, for the most part, are not as well crafted as Disney movies and not enough attention is paid to character animation. But that's obviously to be expected.

Sorry if this was way off topic, Fred.

[Fred Flick Stone]

Miyazaki kicks booty. Off topic, hardly, if one topic spins into another, so long as it isn't destructive, but adds to the constructive, then hell, go down any path necessary.

Japanese anime is primarily very stiff in it's motion. Someone explained it to me once as to why but I forget. One of the reasons is the number of frames they render out, and the number of in betweens. The count is different than what the western animators use, but I forget. DO you Mr Alias know?
They also seem to spend more time in the backgrounds, making them photoreal but in a fuji color sorta way, over saturated with the colors...
Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Macross Plus, Princess Mononoke, and some of Mikimoto's Sharon Apple music videos(animated) are some of the best figure motion out there for anime standards, but these also had bigger budgets.
Oh well, off to finish this theme thingy...

[Kain Victus]

Ahh! Macross Plus! By far my favorite. The Story is just tooooo good, and they did a great job IMO on the characters. Not only that but Sharon Apple ROCKED! I love the sound tracks to it.

Sorry just been a big fan of the Macross Plus series for awhile now. :P

[burn0ut]

I just recently saw mononoke hime omg, the very first part in it i was in awe at the animation. there movments where so superb. i alost recently saw nausicaa, which i thought was amazing also, but i did like the fluid movment in mononoke hime alot more theres my 2cents..

oh yea. another great anime i just found out about is escaflowne kthx

[Fred Flick Stone]

Escaflowne rocks. Also the evangelion series. For an OVA series, they did an excellent job on that one...

[spooge demon]

I am getting a first hand education in Japanese tastes working on that FF film. It is quite fascinating.

Rinaldo, is altieri's wife named Kathy?

Zorn was Swedish.

[Doc Holliday]

I think its amazing how the japanese use less frames to their advantage. The way I see they use each frame as illustration, on the hand disney style animation flows better as a whole. I mean look how great anime looks when its adapted to TV as opposed to US animation. But when it comes to character animation disney is unmatched, They got the whole stretch squash acting bit down. I just wish it had more UMPH!!! Also I noticed that the japanese character designers design a character and worry about how they are going to animate it later. At Disney however, animation is never sacrifised. If something in the design makes it diffucult to animate it is promptly removed. Im generalizing a bit but hey you get my point.

[Doc Holliday]

Wow spooge they still doing pre-production on that? I figured they would be close to finished by now. Oh and another thing i find cool and different about japanese(eastern?) is that the seem to spend more time on design, lines, and patterns. Us westernes tend to be more into form, color, and rendering. Or maybe im talkingout of my a$$ again

[AliasMoze]

Personally, I like that the Japanese go for more mature subject matter and that they take the medium more seriously. And, as far as limited animation goes, they do it very well, in the best cases.

But limited animation will never look as good as full. Plus, you can't beat the tradition that Disney has of character animation. Anime simply doesn't come close in this department.

Movies like "Ghost in the Shell" and "Akira" are nice changes of pace from family films, though.

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AliasMoze
:) :) :) :)
"That activates my hilarity unit."

[SushiMaster]

Back to the original topic, I've just found this amazing collection of hands, and proceeded to download all of them. I plan to paint over as many of these as possible, trying to reproduce the effect, until either I do all of them (unlikely), or my hand drawing becomes vaguely acceptable, or I give up in disgust... *grin* :-)

http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/farp/hand/

Daniel

[burn0ut]

off the topic again. but.
Have any of you seen Cowboy bebop episode 1??
The fight with the bloody eye guy and spike is FANTASTIC! the body movments are increadable if youve seen it youll know what im talkin about the style is so awesome! if you havnt seen it i highly suggest it!

[Rinaldo]

Spooge- yup Kathy Altieri.

I didn't get to have a really good conversation with either. It was at a student Graphic Design convention. and Kathy was talking about The prince of egypt. I was like the most exiting thing there. And then some big hot shot designer couldn't make it. so they got Kevin to do a stand in. He sorta just gave us his life story, talked about comics. Showed us some videos. and then I think he ran out of things to say, so he just let everyone watch a couple of episodes of Animated batman episodes. It was pretty funny. Everyone came out of that conference wanting to be an animator or something closely related. All these people started showing them portfolios and asking questions.
Both really nice people.

By the way I would seriously kill to work on anything even remotly FF, your so damn lucky (and skilled I guess). From what I,ve seen Pixar have got their work cut out for them.

[DeathbyDuplicity]

I'm not a big fan of the huge eyed japanese characters, but I really find myself fond of there more realistic type stuff. Like GITS (Ghost in the Shell), Ninja Scroll, and Blade of the Immortal, and I'd have to agree that there at a whole other level than western stuff. Disney is good at times, with adding just enough to keep you into! But the suprise factor of the japanese stuff is just out of this world. I'm not huge fan but I must say they know there shit! I think it's the fact that US folks pay to much attention to trying to make the story emotion, and fall short of adding that much needed flare and design! The japanese tend to focus more on the overall characters emotion and realist, rather than trying to provoke emotion. Disney in comparison does add that individual feel to their caharacters though! I think Lion King did it best, in the behavior area. But yet they fail to add that real work realism, like textures. Sure their scenery is pretty accurate, but things like dirty fur continue to lack in their stuff! Anime adds that needed maturity to animation! You have to love those japanese for their love for the arts though! A lot of western ppl continue to believe that only kids and immature folks watch toons, while the japanese praise it!

Off the subject here....But don't you just hate it when a toon goes into water and their all wet, but a minute later their dry? Or when their gear gets ripped and it changes shape the next cut? And why don't they scare! Why is this so common in western stuff?

And about comics.....I used to believe that that was what I wanted to do! Man was I wrong! I still read a few, but when I actually got to see the industry from the inside....all that love and hopes died! It all evolves around, who can mimic this person's art, or who can make the most heroic or satanic stuff! It's to repetitive! Sure the folks I worked with at Nocturnal, allowed for complete creative freedom, but sales are based on trends! The pay is already shit, and the artistic need just isn't there and they continue to make it harder for new folks to come in! And 80% of the artist into, sucks horse dick!

[Frost]

Hmm, all this talk reminds me of a 2D realtime cartoon Joachim and Micke did some years ago on PC (DOS) named 'Ninja 2'. It was quite hilarious and very well made. Unfortunately, I don't think it would work on today's machines because of sound board incompatibilities. Joa, you think a mpg version could be made?

For those who want to risk running it and having it not work, here's the link to the demo Ninja 2.

-- Sorry Joachim/Micke, but I still think this is great. =)


[This message has been edited by Frost (edited July 14, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Frost (edited July 14, 2000).]