I'm just wondering what modifications would be necessary if I wanted to animate the Wrangler? Would I need the body mesh under the clothes or could I recnounce this since these clothes seem to be relatively stiff compared to for example a woman's dress.
Yes optimization is a must for this sculpture, namely in the form of complete retopology. The original goal of this course was to be part of a series of courses:
As you can see we made it two courses in before the project lost steam...I would recommend this course as a follow-up. It involves sculpting, retopology, and straight-forward modeling of an animation-friendly character in a similar vein as the wrangler.
Would I need the body mesh under the clothes or could I recnounce this since these clothes seem to be relatively stiff compared to for example a woman's dress.
If you wanted to simulate the clothing via cloth sim, then yes you would need a body mesh to collide with the clothing. You're venturing into extremely complex territory with this method. Honestly with this character's more form-fitting clothing, you could likely get away with not simulating cloth. As you mentioned, a woman's dress would require simulation.
Thank you for your answer. I've already begun to follow the course. As far as I can remember, Jonathan Williamson pointed out that he's doing rigging for posing which he discribed as beeing simpler than for an animation. I'm wondering where these differences are given that you don't plan to animate your character doing extreme or very special movements but normal movements like walking or picking somethin up. Maybe the rig in Jonathan's course could be extended for animation.
Yes, cerainly: A rig to achieve simple posing can also do simple animation. By "simple" I mean fundamental animation like walking, waving, kicking etc.
The fact is movie-quality animation typically uses crazy-complex rigs; multiple different complex rigs in fact. Think about Spiderman: The same rig for close up body-language animation won't work well for extreme web-slinging across a skyline. Both contexts require specific rigs to accomplish.
While animation can be incredibly complex. it can also be simplified for basic tasks.
And we should also mention the Piero animation:
https://cgcookie.com/course/short-film-character-production
I've searched a lot on the web and haven't found anything like that. Outstanding.! The "simple" animation you're mentioning is what I'm currently looking for. So, the posing rig fits my needs. Of course, you can always try to push the limits and create more and more complex movements.