Hey, insanity loves company.....and animators are the quaziest people.........!

Oh, and don't hesitate to get creative when doing the watching or recording of that friend. In a lot of ways, CG animation is far more cut and paste friendly than traditional animation is. The thing you really need for your subject is tactile feedback; real world objects present resistance. For example, say you have a scene where a character is manipulating controls. If they are pushbuttons, then just hand the actor an unplugged ascii keyboard, let them do a one hand dance on the keys, and record that in close up. You not only get footage to examine to pick the best looking hand poses, but you get footage of how the fingers react to the resistance of the keys, and timing footage as to just how fast a human can manipulate those fingers. And that goes for any action thats needed. So long as a prop provides the approximate action and resistance, it doesn't matter if its something utterly silly looking.....it's the action for you to study and rotoscope that truly matters.