Up in Arms

[tikific]

How it would all work anatomically.





Since a couple people have asked about this, I wanted to share images included in the Lilo & Stitch art book. (You can click to embiggen.) As you might know, the character Stitch has a pair of retractable arms, so one of the animators decided to sketch out how that might work.



Chris Sanders mentions in the DVD documentary that he was mildly squicked by all this. I prefer to think Ganesh does it with "magic," especially because I've implied he has more than one pair of extra arms (if you look at images of the Hindu gods, they can have a dozen arms sticking out back there).

Comments

[sike-saner.livejournal.com]

Drawings of weird skeletons are awesome! I like seeing speculation as to how this kind of stuff would work. Tis fascinating. :3

[tikific.livejournal.com]

I love the fact that an animator was so obsessive he had to work out the anatomy! Those Disney guys are just awesome. Something I've still not seen equalled in the modern computer animation was the cool way Stitch moved when he's in his 4-armed form and scurrying up the walls or whatever.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Coooooooooooooool. I like the idea of additional musculature taking the place of the clavicle. Now I have to give this some thought.

I spent a while working out a way for a humanoid to have functional wings, in the early stages of working on my Immense Fantasy Series. Took a lot of skeletal modification, but, damn it, I made it work!

[tikific.livejournal.com]

Yeah, i wouldn't even "go there" with wings, I just wave my hands and to "magic." You'd have to do something like they did in Avatar with the double forelimbs. Did you take a look at any of the Avatar art books? I heard they were pretty good.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

This was WAAAAYYY before Avatar. I just did some comparative A&P between humans and birds (namely New World buzzards, condors, and teratorns) and worked it out from there. The final design had paired clavicles and four scapulae in angels and Nefilim, and an extra set of scapulae and some interesting connective tissue and musculature in angels. Angels have four wings, with the secondary pair being tiny and only intended as a rudder, while Nefilim (who are flightless) only have the primary set of wings.

I really need to finish up those books and get another agent soon.

[tikific.livejournal.com]

What do Nephilim use their wings for? Rude gestures? :D

The thing I like about this mad Disney guy is that he not only attached another set of arms, he MADE THEM RETRACT!

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yeah. :D It's illegal for a Nefil to spread or lift his wings in public, though the law's been in place for so long that it's more or less just considered dreadful manners.

Oh, and most of them get their wings clipped until they're 30, ie the Age of Majority. There are, however, exceptions.

[tikific.livejournal.com]

Is there a place to read your angel stories? 'Cause, they sound awfully keen.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Alas, no. :( I need to get another agent--first one and I had disagreements--and actually sell the things.

[tikific.livejournal.com]

Is it difficult, getting the right literary agent? I imagine you'd have to be on the same wavelength.

[wikdsushi.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Most established agents will take on maybe two new clients a year. The ones just starting out may or may not be able to handle it. It's pretty much just a matter of sending out queries over and over and over and over and....

[tikific.livejournal.com]

I can see how it would ge to be a chore! You need Klokateers! :D

[avalonjones.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool--the scapulae fold out of the way when he retracts his arms!

In some of the Indian art, you see the multi-armed gods and goddesses with the arms "coming out of the same hole," so to speak--but this makes sense!

[tikific.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've also seen representations where the arms seem to be coming from behind their backs. May have been they used models of people standing behind, holding out their arms. ARMS DON'T WORK THAT WAY!!!

[avalonjones.livejournal.com]

There was a M&Ms commercial from sometime in the early 1970s, possibly late 1960s, that had a multi-armed goddess eating M&Ms from most of her many hands, and they did it with a bunch of women all sitting behind each other. A search of YouTube fails to turn it up, however.

[tikific.livejournal.com]

I remember a commercial for SOMETHING where you saw gods and goddesses with bazillion arms. I should probably grab one of those Avatar books, because they supposedly worked out the skeletal system of this weird double armed creatures.

[senoritafish.livejournal.com]

Ooh, neatneatneat! As someone who spent way more time than any sane person should pondering whether or not Inuyasha would be sterile because he's a dog demon/human hybrid (and other silly things about him and his half-brother), I find this pretty fascinating.

Interesting how a critter that's supposed to be an alien has nearly the same skeletal set up as most earth mammals. Males have their tails docked?

[tikific.livejournal.com]

Stitch was supposed to have been created in a laboratory, HOWEVER, they changed the storyline several time (in one version, he was a space gangster) so that may be why the bit about the tail.