The Interdimensional Traveler: A Full Body Character Design - ZBrush Creature Design: Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games - page 105

We touched on these topics in Chapter 1, but these concepts are so important that I would like to touch on
them again here.
Gesture
We talked about gesture in Chapter 1, and it has come up many times over the various projects. We will
reference gesture a few times in this chapter, and many of the decisions we make will be informed by the
desire to create an appealing gesture in the figure. If you have read my previous two topics, the concept of
gesture should be familiar. It is, in my estimation, one of the three tenets of sculpture: gesture, form, and
proportion.
Gesture is the implied line or life of a figure. If you were to draw a line through a figure that represented
its overall stance or thrust, this would be the gesture line ( Figure 3-2 ) . A poor gesture results in a stiff or
lifeless figure. Figure 3-3 shows the final figure from this chapter with gesture lines overlaid. Notice how
the gesture lines work even on a neutrally posed figure. In any position, the model needs to display some
sense of life and spring in its limbs.
Figure 3-2: Here we see a sculpture of a rugby player with the gesture lines indicated.