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Description
People are supposed to get good at drawing through years of study and practise. Not me: I want to take shortcuts! This documents one of my experiments: using mannequins.

The first step was to make low-poly models of some characters. That being my Arwaut and Nicola, and 's Meggie and Staceel. You'll see the latter two are of different quality - that's because I made those first and when I started over for Arwaut I decided to go for more detail. I hope the two won't be offended.

Once I had some characters, I rigged them and put them in a scene together.

Question 1: did the mannequins help me make proper character poses? A: Somewhat. Visualising the characters is much easier when I have them in 3D, but finding a proper 2D framing was a greater challenge. See how in the finished piece, Staceel's arms look less like he's telling an exuberant story and more like he's diving into a pool.

Next step: add lighting and render a picture from a good angle. Then, I lined the mannequins.

Question 2: did the mannequins save time sketching? A: Also somewhat. I didn't model the wings and details, which needed some more attention, but in most places I could use the mannequins as my direct base. It is clear for one that I will need to give any future mannequins more head anatomy, as I did not have a clue what I was doing here drawing faces on my characters randomly.

Then, colour. I elected to use the colours that the rendered mannequins provided. The resulting shading is rather unique compared to my regular drawings (not that I draw regularly).

Question 3: did the mannequins help shading? A: Eh... My mannequins were (at least for the junior dragons) so low-poly that I had to add more in-between shades; and where the details were in different colours from the mannequins, or non-existent on the original, I had to guess. You will see easily which shading is accurate and which I made up.

Question 4: Given that I need some light source but I'm lazy, can I draw one with just two brushes and a filter? A: Eh.....

Result: At least the process made me more efficient with Blender, which is a skill needed for CK3 modding. So by using shortcuts to avoid practising regular drawing, I accidentally practised 3D drawing!

Description
People are supposed to get good at drawing through years of study and practise. Not me: I want to take shortcuts! This documents one of my experiments: using mannequins.

The first step was to make low-poly models of some characters. That being my Arwaut and Nicola, and 's Meggie and Staceel. You'll see the latter two are of different quality - that's because I made those first and when I started over for Arwaut I decided to go for more detail. I hope the two won't be offended.

Once I had some characters, I rigged them and put them in a scene together.

Question 1: did the mannequins help me make proper character poses? A: Somewhat. Visualising the characters is much easier when I have them in 3D, but finding a proper 2D framing was a greater challenge. See how in the finished piece, Staceel's arms look less like he's telling an exuberant story and more like he's diving into a pool.

Next step: add lighting and render a picture from a good angle. Then, I lined the mannequins.

Question 2: did the mannequins save time sketching? A: Also somewhat. I didn't model the wings and details, which needed some more attention, but in most places I could use the mannequins as my direct base. It is clear for one that I will need to give any future mannequins more head anatomy, as I did not have a clue what I was doing here drawing faces on my characters randomly.

Then, colour. I elected to use the colours that the rendered mannequins provided. The resulting shading is rather unique compared to my regular drawings (not that I draw regularly).

Question 3: did the mannequins help shading? A: Eh... My mannequins were (at least for the junior dragons) so low-poly that I had to add more in-between shades; and where the details were in different colours from the mannequins, or non-existent on the original, I had to guess. You will see easily which shading is accurate and which I made up.

Question 4: Given that I need some light source but I'm lazy, can I draw one with just two brushes and a filter? A: Eh.....

Result: At least the process made me more efficient with Blender, which is a skill needed for CK3 modding. So by using shortcuts to avoid practising regular drawing, I accidentally practised 3D drawing!