Designing the white wolf (and dog) trope. It can be difficult to differentiate canine character
Designing the white wolf (and dog) trope. It can be difficult to differentiate canine characters with similar color pallets. It’s really important to express the feelings and emotions of the character through the pose and facial construction or otherwise they’ll basically be a clone. I took Aniu as the base design that I referenced from for all 3 drawings. I LOVE her design in general as she really hits the mark for me as far as great wolf designs. She was just a re-hash of her source work, but it gave me a lot of ideas as to HOW to build a good looking wolf character.The original art style for Wolf’s Rain is gorgeous, but the wolves themselves fall short in terms of designs within the style. They’re all basically the same with a few tweaks here and there, so I wanted the wolf designs to reflect their human designs and personalities. Kiba is the most wolf-y acting of the main cast, so I didn’t give him a dynamic post that would make him look too human. He’s proud, but also pensive and determined. Since he’s obviously some kind of arctic/tundra wolf I gave him a lot more fur than the other wolves (but not as fluffy/ethereal as Aniu). This also gave him a nice silhouette to distinguish him form the rest of the cast. My main focus was on his eyes/face. I really wanted to capture that serious far off look he has in many of the episodes while searching for paradise.Akame is a kishu inu, not a wolf, but his design is also a good example for comparison. Similar to Kiba, he’s proud, but not prideful. The source of his pride come to the dedication to his clan, not an internal struggle like Kiba, and his pose reflects that (head held high, more open stance). He’s also older than Aniu and Kiba so his face is a more worn and roughed up. Since his name means ‘red eyes’ I played with the idea of him being albino and gave his base palette a red tone. This is also because I had planned to also draw Jinnai and Kirikaze as white kishus, once again to differentiate them from their leader in color and design. Probably could have blocked him in a bit more to make him look more doggy, but sometimes the design speaks to me more than 100% accurately portraying the animal. You can lose a lot of good lines and character if you make them too stiff or too close to real animals. It’s a cartoon, so it’s good to relax sometimes and have some fun with lines, shape, and weight :0!! -- source link
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