I make a lot of these. Finding a cluster of branches that will work for a piece like this is more rare than one may think. It is a totally reductive process. Some raw pieces have more branches to choose the fingers from. It is good when there is a choice of the branches I cut or keep. Sometimes just having five useable branches to work with is good enough.
My favorite life lesson from this kind of process is if I go too far it will be ruined!