I actually used a posing program called XPS/XNA Posing Studio that's low weight and relatively streamlined for basic posing and animations. It was my first time working with 3D models (outside of watching my partner at the time using stuff like MikuMikuDance) so I'm sure there's better ways to do it, but yeah, I basically just grabbed publicly available models, imported into XPS and posed everything by hand. Workflow was really sloppy initially, but I got more organized as I went (e.g. making proper saves of pose data so I could elaborate or alter as needed). Made poses in batches based on how the writing developed, did annoying keyframe animation when I wanted something fancier, and created some Photoshop action sets to streamline the visual touch-ups.
Getting all the images followed this basic process: 1) record video from my PS4 version of the game; 2) manually screenshot frames that I wanted; 3) run a batch of screenshots through a Photoshop action to ensure they were all cropped properly to fit the game; 4) manually edit screenshots where needed (to remove UI elements); 5) run a batch export to give them sequential naming convention; 6) after working a batch into the game and pruning as needed, I ran the final files through TinyPNG for compresssion (I bought a year of premium just for the volume processing lol). Thinking back on this... wow what a huge pain in the ass lol. I was a younger, healthier person then.
You just never know what kind of hardware situation people are bringing to your game lol, but that's genuinely useful to know! What browser did you use?
And thank you so much for the kind review!!