When it comes to posing my character, I want the pose to be a part of the story telling. To help with a few ideas of posing I first looked at the Iconologia. The Iconologia is an emblem book written by Cesar Ripa that contains drawings and descriptions of various words, themes, and phrases that has been used as reference for many classical pieces.
Below are a few that I found the most interesting for my project.
Next I gathered a few artists the fit the style and theme of what I'm going for to see how they pose
I also reference lots of sculpture as well (my favorite sculptor is Bernini)
Of course I also gathered life reference as well. I found Grafit Studio packs to be the best packs for reference. I would also highly recommend getting the 900+ Plus-Size VS Slim Model Turnaround Reference Pictures pack. Having reference for various body types, including plus-size, is always a great thing to have and can be hard to come by.
These are references I obtained while I was in college and fit it quite useful when it comes to various body types
Now that I have all this reference, it was time to practice posing. I experimented with ActorCore by Reallusion. It's free and it's amazing! I'm definitely considering it for a final rig but for blocking I wanted to use something even more basic.
I rigged the mesh using Rigify in Blender (free add-on in Blender software) using the basic human armature, which does not rig the fingers. I used the Zbrush female figure as my experimental posing mesh. The deformations will be ugly but blocking is all about getting down and dirty. Things will get polished later on.
