Sign Language Gestures (for a Young Girl and her Mom)

[Kilyle]

There's a Deaf character in my story, and her family has become more prominent as I realized that they work really well with the main character and the thematic relationships between her and her past.  Now I'm wondering how difficult it's gonna be to get some reasonable sign language with just sprites.  (I prefer to have the sign language look like sign language, rather than just arm-flailing.)

I don't have any character art yet, but the style I'm aiming for is this and this.  The mom (the one who'd be doing the most sign language toward the girl) is Irish, and the kid is Irish/Japanese, an introverted girl about 9 years old.

What I'd like to see is just a character in general making gestures, to see how it might look to have them talking while the main character doesn't understand them.  I can see possible stuff like "I'm fine" (open hand taps center of chest sideways vertically), "You know" (bent hand taps temple), "Forget it" (open hand wipes across forehead and flings it away), "Sorry" (fist rubs in a circle over heart), "Thanks" (open hand taps lips and moves forward; bigger version uses two hands) and such.  I'm just wondering how much articulation is possible given the pixel art constraints.

I'm also hoping for an angry-looking "They treat me like a dummy" set of gestures and "Leave me alone," though it's been a while since I studied the language and I don't know how either of those would look.

So, if there's anyone here who does pixel art and either knows some sign language (ASL, though Japanese Sign Language would also be acceptable) or could look some up online and do some art to match, I hope you'll give this a shot.  Thanks!

[lonewolf]

thats going to be hard

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=irish+sign+language+alphabet&es_sm=93&biw=1024&bih=667&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=X5WuVISFKYu5Uc7Tgmg&ved=0CCAQsAQ

[Kilyle]

Ooh, didn't realize (though I probably should've) that Irish had its own.  I've only ever seen American and Japanese, and the amount of info I could find on Japanese at the time was scant.  Thanks for pointing that out!

Even so, the only reason I can think of to have her practice Irish Sign Language would be to further drum home her alienation -- as in, has trouble communicating with other Deaf students, since they speak ASL.  The whole family has been in America for a long time (I'm assuming the kids were born in America, though I haven't really worked out the full details of their backstory yet) and speak American English, and the Deaf girl went deaf from fever around age six or seven so she did have a pretty decent grasp of American English prior to losing her hearing -- she's also had a few years of working with other Deaf students and picking up the language pretty rapidly.  So I really do think it's ASL, although it's possible that their history is living in Japan until a few years ago, in which case it'd be JSL.

I think, for the purposes of pixel art, that some general hand shapes and a focus on motion (rather than form) would probably work best.  As in, I don't really expect the letter-based words to come through (C-form for coffee/chocolate/etc., T for toilet), but the general location of the sign and the movement of it would convey enough.

I suppose it's possible to do it in via animated portraits or cut scenes or something, but I want it to be a normal background conversation much like several others I'm planning (conversations the hero can choose to join, or not, as desired by the player), rather than something that gets a ton of focus or comes across as something the player really needs to pay attention to and/or decode.  I could see teaching the player a few signs and having her be able to use them in much the same way that she uses other chat commands, but that's about the limits that the signing would get used in up-close conversation -- the girl is capable of speaking aloud even if her volume is unmoderated and her accent's a bit weird; she just can't hear and has little skill in lip reading.

[lonewolf]

i love to play this it close to my heart as my wife is Deaf

[Kilyle]

i love to play this it close to my heart as my wife is Deaf

Which style of sign language does she speak?

I should probably give fair warning that I have a history of starting all sorts of fun and interesting projects and then moving on to other projects and never finishing them.  I have gotten precisely one project (a pair of articles about coat hangers) actually published in print, and no other writing project has ever been seen through to completion... yet.  Still, this story has stuck with me for twenty years and some, so I imagine it's likelier than other projects of mine to get published... eventually.  And recently a lot of little things have felt like breakthroughs and "perfect fit" moments that I didn't have before, so I may be a lot closer to getting somewhere with it than I had been.

All that said, it's a huge endeavor and unlikely to make it to even a demo form any time soon.

By the way, as far as my experience with Deaf culture so far, it's limited to my year of ASL in college, and developing a friendship with the teacher (Dawn) until she had to move away.  Besides just coming to understand the peculiar grammar of ASL, and be astounded and delighted by the way that certain signs were non-arbitrary words (or certainly with far less arbitrary nature than any spoken word ever could be), it was a quite enjoyable year, and gave me glimpses into a fascinating culture I hadn't even realized existed (and which needs more representation in media, hence my choice to include a Deaf person in my cast).  Since then I've had a couple opportunities to converse in ASL with Deaf people I've met, though my skills were noticeably beginner.

The most interesting activity for me was an assignment to shop at a mall for a while but pretend to be Deaf.  I quickly came to understand how a simple task like trying to find an item or get appropriate customer service can be difficult when there's a language barrier, and while I may have forgotten the specific details of the activity (besides having to wear earplugs hidden under a headband, because otherwise I reacted to sound far too easily), it made an indelible impression on me.

(I wish I retained enough of my skills to be able to understand this Night Vale in ASL video.  I find it pretty awesome that someone took the time to make one.)

[lonewolf]

Irish sign language  my dad used his sign language when i needed to ask her some thing  but he in not here no more but my son he now how to use her one  i know some but it had to use her one as the way we do sign is faster her is more slower i may sign some and look at my lips at the same time in the window
to see if she can read my lips as it may not be the sound she can see me saying

i wish you all the luck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeHgCgNk608
hi hello my name is ? they talk to fast like my dad use to and its hard to see as there moving the hand to fast

[Kilyle]

Thanks.  I hope I can do justice by the characters and concepts I've been working on.

Just ran across an ASL Bible translation tonight (which made me think to check back on this thread).  It's not a version of an English translation, it's its own ASL-specific translation.  For some reason they've put their playlist together in reverse order so the sections play from the end of the book to the beginning, but I'm kind of glad that they're short because that way I don't get quite so lost.