Gestures illustrate/communicate a feeling that a character has; As humans we tend to gesture a lot, and we do it spontaneously, our job as animators is to think about the gestures we add into our characters, why we're adding them,
and push them to make it look more entertaining.
Gestures can tell a lot about the personalty of the character, if a person is nervous he will gesture in a certain way, if he is happy he will gesture in another; you want to make a proper well though acting choices that goes along the mental status
of the character in that given moment, you don't want to animate a gesture just for the sake of doing it, it has to mean something.
The best advice for animating interesting gestures is to be aware of the world around you, shooting a video reference of yourself acting out a shot is great.. BUT!! sometimes people start seeing you in the characters that you animate, so the best way to avoid that is to observe people around you, whether its a friend, a brother, an uncle, and try create a visual reference
in your head to refer back to, you could also build a digital archive of reference clips which is highly recommended for every animator to have because its another way of staying fresh with your ideas.
There are many elements that makes gestures look interesting, I'll try to cover some of them:
- Stay away from cliché gestures, and design your gestures to be different from what has been done over & over again.
- Be aware of the physicality & weight of the character while animating gestures,
- Utilize props around the characters to gesturing with, things like a cup, a cigar. a pen, etc.
- While animating a shot with a dialog, avoid hitting every single phrase in your animation with a gesture, simplify it!
- Create nice design patterns & arcs when gesturing.
- Give gestures enough time to read clearly.
- Vary & texture the timing of your gestures.
- Avoid Twinning while gesturing unless its needed, here is few ways to make twinned gestures more interesting:
. Arrive to & leave from a gesture at different times with each side of the body.
. Unsymmetrical gestures followed be a symmetrical one.
. Use contrast & texture to break up twinning.
. Lead/anticipate a twinned gesture with a smaller gesture.
Gestures should help to extenuate the idea, so don't over use it cuz it will become distracting for the viewer. & remember
that animation is all about clarity!