peridot's finger animation | orig post : OCT 2015

mirroring this over 9 years later, i wouldn't exactly say it's up to snuff with my current writing/analysis skills.....however, it's one people still really seem to like and will cosistently dig up/reblog even at present in 2024, so i figure there must be something about it still worth preserving

i wanna talk about this little segment of animation on peridot because i think it's really great.
a'ite so at the beginning of the ep here she's having this breakdown right?
peridot's already infamous for her incredible facial expressions, and this segment is definitely no exception,,,

but what i love even more is how it's expressed through her fingers, how such a unique design element is used so naturally and dynamically in her language.

i don't know how exactly she moves them, but it's clear they reflect something of her state of mind.
peridot loves nothing if not order; keeping a bunch of little poles in a hand or otherwise functional arrangement all the time seems like a unnecessarily small thing to point out for that, until you look at how they behave when she's not fully keeping control.  

they go everywhere.
she's a mess. girl's on her last desperate nerve here and it shows.
she doesn't even have them in a sensible arrangement until she deliberately gestures with them, and even then they're way more loose in this scene than any before.

like she's literally barely holding together.

it's mildly interesting that she's more collected [visually, at least] immediately after he last hope is extinguished, until she has to explain to steven about their shared fate.

it's easy to see what she's trying to do with her hands, just a general "throwing hands up in exasperation" gesture, but geez, at this point their arrangement barely resembles anything any more. and then this:

side note- i also think it's cool how they managed to get her to simultaneously do like 3 different nervous gestures with one hand here; she's just putting her fingers to use wherever they ended up.

even the hand that's just idling as a hand is floating everywhere haphazardly

anyway my favorite part is this bit here,

it's again easy to understand it simply as an "okay listen, kid" kind of gesture, but the way her fingers methodically reorganize back into hands as she inhales, it's like she's recomposing not only her stance, but her thoughts, both of which are conveyed awesomely through this deliberate "lining up and holding together" animation.

peridot has so many ways to be expressive and the crew utilizes them all  so expertly and i love it.
and i mean, this isn't even touching how shelby rabara nailed every voice crack and anxious falter in peridot's voice while all this is happening...