Rigging:
To facilitate posing, my creature was then rigged and weight painted in Blender.
However, on checking the weight painting, I discovered that issues had been created in the extremities of tail appendage due to some weight painting leaking into other joints within the pelvis. However once the ‘bone’ causing the problem had been identified, this was easily solved by applying a gradient with zero weight.
Posing:
With this issue corrected, the next step was to place the model into the ‘conflict’ pose between anxiety and depression I’d envisioned. However, before doing this, knowing that a natural and organic pose would make my creature more believable, I researched animals from the same Canis genus, standing in a similar pose to see how their weight was distributed, and their body flowed.
Creating a subtle sense of dynamism, and curves that produce a natural flow that guide the viewer’s eye, this intimidating pose, where the paw is raised ready for action, and wolf-like, the head is lowered and facing backwards towards the tail, was then replicated in my model.
Also, when posing the tail appendage, care was taken to avoid parallel placement, and that it was positioned in a way that not only depicts the battle between anxiety and depression, but also relays that this part of the creature is a formidable adversary in its own right.
However, realising that by placing the creature in this pose, the anatomy no longer felt balanced, the hip and thigh areas were bulked up to make the proportions more realistic and harmonious, with the final result seen below:
Silhouette:
Finally, the creature’s silhouette was checked from different angles to ascertain if the pose could be easily read, and conveyed the envisioned energy, intent and personality; which I feel it does.
With that, the posed model was then ready to be placed within its habitat – an environment which would be created in the next stage of the pipeline using Unreal Engine 5.