Oni Drunkard Model WIP: Foam Dragon Blend and Rig

So I had an idea for a more unorthodox attacking style that the Oni could use, mainly because I felt like swinging around the mug would be kind of restrictive and repetitive.

In the concept art originally I knew the mug would have a head of froth swishing around while attacking anyway, so I thought, "What if he could use the alcohol itself as a weapon?"

Because the character was already themed after an Oni, I decided to go the route of having the alcohol embody a sort of spirit or demon itself, that the Oni can then channel and use to attack.

To start, I added the foam mesh on top of the mug.

To make this, I actually started with a subdivided cube, and then deformed it as a blend shape.

This was crucial, because then I could set it back to the original sphere shape, and deform it again as a different blend shape, this time a monster head.

It looks a bit rough, but it's going to not be seen stationary often, so it's a bit less egregious.

Then, I can blend between the two shapes and make the dragon head appear out of the foam itself!

Then add just a simple bendy bone, parent a cylinder to it, and parent the head to it...

And it looks pretty good! The plan with the body is to have it double layered with a scrolling translucent swirl texture, to make it look like a frothy, swirling tornado.

Just a bit of simple rigging for the dragon head to let it deform and move around as it's animated, so it doesn't look like a static block on a neck.

And lastly just a super rough render animation of it all in action, both the Oni and the dragon moving together.

Just need to finish up the rigging on the head and start the texturing process now!