Canine Study

tweekedgirl

Hi everyone, I've been working on this sculpt for the past couple of weeks during my breaks at work, and I'm trying to gain a better understanding of canine anatomy. I would love some feedback as to how this is looking so far. The plan is to get to a point where I'm happy with the muscles ect, pose it and potentially give fibremesh a go.

WIP shots:


(Apologies for the imageshack linking, need to find a better image host!)

The dog is based off of my own dog, who is a Saluki/Greyhound, so I'm using a mixture of reference pictures of him, and other examples of the breeds. The anatomy I'm referencing from An Atlas of Animal Anatomy.
Going to spend a few more hours on this throughout today, with the main areas of focus being the inner hind leg, face and ears.

Thanks for looking!

tweekedgirl

And a quick orthographic view of where it's at.

jhoythottle

Cool pooch! In the straight on front view in the last image, the front legs seem a bit uniform in diameter. Sort of like a tree trunk. I don't have reference you're going from, but it seems like there should be some tapering in the joints- maybe towards the bottom? Also, the area where the neck meets the breast bone looks a little too sculpted and not like muscle - specifically those 2 boxy shapes that look like a zsub clay tube brush stroke.

Great work though, I look forward to the final version of this.

tweekedgirl

Cheers for the feedback jhoy! I actually fixed up the front legs yesterday, so good call on that, and I'll definitely revisit the neck. I'm not too keen on the whole neck section to be honest, it doesn't feel right where it meets the body or where the chest plate would be.

Here's my dog who is my main reference.



Small update from yesterday:


The main things changed yesterday was the shape of the front legs, and the overall silhouette to match the reference image.
There's a few things I know need fixing.

• From the front view he's far too wide
• On his head the stop is not abrupt enough, it transitions too smoothly
• The entire neck needs a revisit

Also had a quick look at creating a Zsphere rig yesterday and having a go at transpose master, but I actually think I'll end up rigging and posing this in Maya.