Working with poses

This Lara Croft WIP was meant for the Tomb Raider Reborn contest in deviantart.com but unfortunately I started late and couldn't meet the deadline.  I do hope to come back to it for practice and to finish it.

I'm glad though I got to try a technique that makes poses in drawings more manageable or modular.  I hope I made sense with that.  The technique I tried was:

1. creating a 3d model of desired proportions (in my case, a girl/woman)
2. rigging the model to be able to pose it in any way easily along with the camera for choice angles.
3. capturing screenshots from the 3d program view or rendering it into an image file.
4. tracing or overlaying the screenshots on photoshop and start drawing in the shapes

The process took long but from now on, I already have a ready file to go back to to get the poses I like to be used in my 2d artworks.  It's a lot more convenient now and I won't have to worry a lot about proportion, perspective, and foreshortening that much--it can initially be set in the 3d program.

Here are some screenshots I prepared for Lara:

Of course it would be much better too if you had modeled or skinned the model in a way that they wouldn't breakup but in this case, I am able to achieve what I wanted with those rough poses and silhouettes. Plus, it's quicker to prepare the posable 3D model that way.

Here's my most recent WIP that I used the technique on:

Now this one I also used picture reference in conjunction with the 3D model screenshots.  And I constantly tweaked parts as I go on.  It's fun trying out these kind of workarounds to make things easier; it saves your energy for the other more challenging steps--for me--like shading.