One of the objectives for the HeroMachine Expansion was to provide a way to get the figure's hands in different positions. It always bothered me that even when holding a gun, when you'd expect a trigger finger to be extended, the character still was shown with a fist. I also wanted you to be able to show the hands splayed, as if they were getting ready to throw firebolts or whatnot. To that end, I introduced a skin with no hands at all, so you could affix other items to the end of the forearm without having to worry about covering up the clenched fist that's there by default on the body. It's the last item in the "Skin-Expansion1" set, and it looks like this:
To go along with this skin, the Right/Left Hand Expansion 1 sets also contain items that have hands integrated into them, so they look more natural. You'll find a hand holding a pipe, some cards, a protester's sign, a hand with the index finger in trigger position, and more. I put together an image that uses the "no hands" skin and two of the integrated hand-held items to give you an example of how they might work together:
Since the basic pose can't change (too many items depend on its exact positioning), shifting the hands around is a good way to add a bit of life and differentiation to your character. If you find yourself with one of these integrated items in the right hand, but nothing in the left but a stump (or vice versa), you can also choose a glove that will do as a stand in if you prefer not to use the blank one provided in the expansion component set.
While I appreciate the concept, it doesn’t quite work for me. The hand-item combo assumes no gloves or gauntlets. There are some nice new items, but I keep finding myself wishing they didn’t come with ‘pre-attached’ hands. Maybe a better way would be to treat the different hand postions as an alternate to the different gloves. Just a thought.
Yeah, you kind of have to go with one of the “armband” type of gloves to keep the hand portion of the glove from ruining the effect. A limitation, to be sure.
i like the better hands. But i think ther should also be different feet, for e.g. the high heels dont match well with teh feet it should bend more, which would me necessary if the will be higher heels.
Truthfully, hands are a minor point for me. I’d love to see more head-pieces (masks, headgear, mouth/jaw variations, non-human noses). I’ve struggled with creating a werewolf or lizardman face, but nothing quite works for me. There are a lot of good options, but more options gives more variety.
Do not think we missed the pinky thing going on with the big guy holding that mug!
Agree with response #1.
Bigger issue to me is color. The handless poses & lefthand/righthand objects either reduce one color, or lock it down. That is, having an object with a single color (w/ shading in handless poses) or locking a color down (say, righthand > expansion1 > ‘whip’ [a luggage pic]) to match the included fleshtone hand may not be the desired colors for the creation.
Have gotten around one color righthand object by putting a two-color glove over it (std > rightglove > forearm). Rest of the composition covered the tweak. Then, the glove item it tied down…heh.
Gets strange for strange creations (aliens, far future, psychedelic, etc). Yes, have seen an alien lawyer created (pre-expansion1 & looked quite good, too). Result: V. rare use of expansion1 poses & ‘handed’ objects.