Sunday, April 06, 2008

Hand Poses Galore!














One of the most over looked parts of a character's body when animated are the hands. Our "phalanges" can convey just as much emotion and intensity as our faces. You can also think of hand gestures as the punctuation of a character's body language. That's why the hands need careful thought and consideration but remember...simplicity is key!

Also check out Disney story artist Mark Kennedy's blog post on the importance of drawing hands:

// Hands 



Here are some excellent references for hands:

 
 
SPA Klaus - model sheet by Animation Sup Yoshimichi Tamura 
 

 
 
 
 
Milt Kahl hand poses


Batman Hand Poses







Mickey Mouse Hand Model Sheet by Les Clark ca. 1932








Preston Blair hand poses








































Spline Doctors - Thoughts on hand poses (toward the bottom of the page)





Hogarth hand poses from Iron Giant (more middle of page)



























Check out Toby Shelton's hand examples on his blog - Stuff I Did

























Gobber Hand Poses via Ben Balistereri's blog


















Merlin hand poses via Deja View



















Andreas Deja hand study via Deja View blog

























Nice simple tutorial by D Helmer





































More hand reference





























































































Lilo and Mama Odie hand poses via  //  Deja View blog




























































































































The 10 illustrations below are from Joshua Taback. Checkout more golden drawing tips like these over at Drawniversity.





























































































More hand pose studies by story artist Toby Shelton























From Deja View








































Hunchback of Notre Dame - Hand sketches by Ron Husband





















































Great anatomy reference on pinterest





















Some nice poses by illustrator J.C. Leyendecker 







































Hands by Griz and Norm
























Hand studies by Dave Bardin




















Pablo Navarro hand diagram sheets

























































14 comments:

Joshua Hayes said...

I love the Iron Giant.

Ali said...

Bryon! Whats up man long time no see!

Love your blog, some great stuff here.

I moved to vancouver like last year, how is everything with you down in SF? If you have a facebook account or something let me know, much easier to stay in touch through that :)

Take care man!
-Ali

ALee said...

Thanks, I've been having issues drawing hands... these are some great references!

Michael said...

Excellent resource, Byron.
I'm sculpting hands at the moment and it's not easy!

dancing platypuss said...

great!!! pretty useful!!!

jeffry said...

hi!!! love your stuff, but are there any books that you can recommend that just simply have hand poses in them or websites for that matter, thanks, would really appreciate it.

Éder Gil said...

muito legal esse post!
vai me ajudar muito!!!

David Hernston said...

I really like your post -- very helpful for hand reference. Some of the images, though, would be really useful in higher resolution. For instance, I can't really read the text in that tall "hand tutorial" image. Any chance you could give download links for these file?

Nikhita P. said...

Wow, what an amazing collection of hand resources! I'm archiving this in my blog, http://www.thegreedpencil.bloogspot.com/ Thanks so much!

Sherm said...

Best collection of hand-drawing reference ever! Thaks for putting in all the work to make this happen :)

Bryon Caldwell said...

Thanks Sherm :) I love your work man! Big fan!

Leesa Dean said...

This is absolutely awesome and helpful. Thanks!

Charlene Fleming said...

Thank you so much for compiling and sharing this list of hand references. I made it one of my artistic goals of the year to do a page of hand studies every day and these are really going to help me understand hand construction.

trrhorse said...

This is fanTAStic! Thank You