/3/ - 3DCG

>>632582
There are plenty of tutorials explaining workflows in details, but you would normally do a base in a symmetrical pose, then pose, then continue out of that. There is no need to "animate", which requires rigging, just posing works.
It depends of the projects really. Some can be almost fully done in symmetrical poses, while others have more complicated ones which requires more work to have a quality result in that pose.