Help with hellhound

jrs100000

Ive been working on this guy for a couple days now and Ive hit a dead end. The goal here is ANGER! It should look like he is straining so hard that his skull is ripping out of his mouth. I think that Im close, but I just cant figure out what that last little missing thing is. Any help would be much appreciated.


High Poly





Low Poly

jlewis

where is your reference for this snarling k-9?

jrs100000

Here are the references this is composited from (plus some that exists only in my head).

LEViATHAN

I think that you have too much random shapes atm., instead of following the muscles of a real dog or similar animal.

CheeseOnToast

The most obvious thing to me is that you don't seem to have that "sneer" at the front of the mouth that's shown so well in the pic of the bull terrier. Sculpt in the lip shape and see what it looks like after that.

John Warner

i think it would be damn neer impossible to get the full feel in the ref pose. if this is a sculpture, i say "fuck it. just pose the thing and work from there"

also, some of the forms look a bit unballanced. he's quite front-heavy. the front shoulder is a little big.. and it's a bit too lumpy. maybe you dont care amuch about detail, and i respect that, but at least ONE level of detail needs to be perfect. if you're not going to have detail, then the larger shapes have got to be bang on. pick what shapes you like, nail them perfectly, get him in a nice pose, and then decide later if you want to go in and add definition...

jrs100000

Here are some updates. Id like to keep the 'nonstandard anatomy' if possible. The goal is more an unearthly creature than a standard pitbull. However, I do think that might be one thing that is causing problems, in that musculature is one thing people use to judge emotional states. With that in mind I have traced out some of the more prominent muscles on the front leg. I hope that will be enough, but Im not sure yet.

The lips! I cant really find much in the way of references for lips in the position I would like, but that doesnt mean I can just leave them out. So, I have made the lips more prominent and defined the creases around them a little more clearly. Im concerned that it looks more like the skin around the mouth is slipping off rather than violently ripping, but at least I think there is now some sense that the skull and the face are detaching.

For detail, I really would like to add more but my poor laptop is slowing down to 1 or 2 fps at half a million polys, another subdivision might start a fire. Once I have the current version perfect I might try bringing it into Zbrush to finish off the small details.

Asherr

"traced out some of the more prominent muscles on the front leg"?
i don't see anything on your model resembling muscles. the random bulges you have on there make it look more like stone smoothed by running water.

jrs100000

Guess Ive got some more tracing to do then

oobersli

i would say kill all this detail... go with a lower poly version and plug that into zbrush. All the detail you have now can be done in zbrush. Plus you really really really need to check your anatomy more. At the moment.. its just bulges and random bumps.

Jeremy Lindstrom

Here's some more reference:

You also seem to have him snarling so much he no longer has a nose. Figure out 'what' type of dog and use that dog as reference. Is it a Doberman like in Resident Evil movies? A pitt bull? etc.. then use that ref for the base. Don't try and put so many details at once, start slow then move up once you can't push the model anymore in that sub division level.

http://images.google.com/images?ndsp=21&um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=snarling+dog&start=0&sa=N

Kawe

Even if you don't want to follow normal anatomy I think you need to have some kind of "rule" to follow so it feels like something that can actually walk. Right now it feels like he's covered in clay.

As for making him look more evil. First off his eyes are closed it looks like. That is not intimidating at all. His eyes are much too open.. or not open enough. Either make it look like he's gonna devour your heart or make him have this evil grin. Half-open like that makes it look like he's out of breath but not trying to show it.

jrs100000

Im apparently the only person who liked the old body at all, so Ive smoothed all of that off and sculpted a couple more anatomically correct muscles on. I also flattened the lips way down. I think I am getting much closer to the picture in my head.

I wish I could find the original picture, but Im not sure if it ever even existed. I think that the inspiration for this was an old (70s early 80s?) horror movie poster that I may or may not have seen as a kid. There was a wolf/dog jumping through the air to bite something with its skull stretched so far forward that it was coming out of its skin. Its been so many years that Im not even sure if I ever really saw such a poster or that it ever existed, but the idea is still lodged firmly in my mind...sort of, instead of a wolf in sheeps clothing a demon in wolfs clothing...the idea is that there is something even more terrifying hiding inside of the wolf and starting to break out of its skin. That (and lack of skill) was my motivation for the strange muscle shapes, but I do like the newer version as well since it draws more attention to the face.

Im still very concerned about he area over the nose and below the eye holes. Getting the skin to look like its peeling away from the bone unevenly is also giving me a hard time.

Tumerboy

lack of skill should not be used as an excuse to do things wrong. Even if you don't have the skills to do things well, you should always be trying to do them properly.

jrs100000

Well I thought it looked good. With more skill I would have realized how wrong I was. Or perhaps experience would have been a better term for me to use.

Tumerboy

http://www.monstergalaxy.com/wolf_werewolf.php

jrs100000

Wow thats close, thanks Tumerboy ! Looks like Im way off on the mouth...lots of changes to make.

fattkid

Your recent update with a bit more functional anatomy looks quite a bit better..... no matter how fantastical your creature is, you'll need to have it grounded in reality if you want to sell your design, especially something as common as a hound like creature.... after all, how can people make sense out of a design that makes no sense? This is good progress...., keep it up.