Hello hello, a quick question
I've been retrying a (re)design for my were-dog, but it never seems to go very well. Is there any drawing tips you do for ur Cap'n were-dog? Or was there anything you specifically looked at for reference?
(no idea if you still dooble your LC guys, but y'know, worth an ask)
I do still draw 'em, just definitely not as often! (Despite thinking about them like... daily.)
As for your redesign, I suppose it'd depend on what you're going for!
I don't know if I'll be much help because truthfully, my process was "Draw an eyeless dog. Okay now how would that look like as a person?" The real challenge there is like... Figuring out what an eyeless dog... is?
It has loads of ways to interpret what it is since it's so strange and polygonal, so it's a bit of a blank slate for how to understand the intent with its design! (Versus something like [my were-feiopar], which is pretty straightforwardly a type of were-panther)
For me, I've always read the back frill as membranous, similar to undersea creatures (also tying back to their blindness imo). However there's people who interpret it as a mane, which I think is cool, too!
From there, I had to decide its major influences. Because of the frill situation, I had already decided it was gonna be pretty hairless, but structurally similar to a lion due to its bestiary entry! (I also looked up other fanart to see other interpretations of things I was uncertain about, such as the face)
Then after I finally got all of THAT together, THAT is when I had to figure out how Cap'n looked.
Personally, I like when my wereanimal designs don't JUST look like anthro versions of the thing they are (this is actually the biggest reason I changed [my OC, Ratman's, design] slightly), but have some influence from being human. It's actually also why her chin has the splash of brown underneath: that's her skintone!
Because of this, I already knew she'd be keeping her eyes (even though I reeeally wanted to do some really fucked up body horror shenanigans to get rid of them, haha). This also helped me lean into that "vacant stare" she's got going on 99% of the time, to contrast her normal, extremely locked-in self.
She also was going to be quadrupedal at first, but again, I felt like it was too close to the original eyeless dog design I sketched, which is why she became more traditionally bipedal! This is also why she has hair on her tail/arms, as opposed to the actual eyeless dog.
As for references, I didn't really look up any specifically EXCEPT FOR ONE (1) THING: I definitely used "The Lion King" as reference points once I established the lion influence, since I REALLY like the way they anthropomorphized their paws!
Otherwise, it was complete vibes. She's kinda got a lion-anglerfish situation going on just cause I felt like it. The frill kind of looks like a hair because it's a fun shape! I don't know what this is!
She's got wispy eyebrows that are white because the contrast looks good, break up that part of the face a bit, and one of her potential color schemes had white hair! She hunches cause it looks neat! She has yellow eyes because reasons!
tl;dr I established clear, intentional choices in how I'd draw the eyeless dog design by looking up what other people did, then figured out what I wanted from a wereanimal version of it and what it does for the character (for Cap'n it was simple: capable leader who's good at stuff gets turned into wound-up dog who bites immediately. I liked the contrast!)
