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Gesture just means acting, and it doesn't matter one bit what tools you use to draw a character as long as you make him act. When studying gestural movements, or acting, you use basic figure constructions ala cylinders and boxes very quickly, in a sketchy manner, so you can indicate a figure as a 3d form and be aware of perspective (you probably want to work quickly before that first impression of the action is clear in your mind). A lot of the time you can ignore the 3d aspect of your figure in places and use only the contour line or a circle instead of a sphere for a joint as long as you communicate and understand yourself the movement of your character in space.
Gesture drawing is not "ooh, I'm gonna draw a flowy line and draw a cylinder bending with it" or whatever. It's not the first and required step in figure drawing. Flowy line drawing, or what a lot of artists like to call gesture drawing, is nothing more than a tool for unification of movement within a figure, and you don't have to use it if you understand the biomechanic principles of the human body and the basic rules of animation.
Do your gestural, acting, sketches first and then draw a proper figure based off that if you want.
