I seem to have a habit of starting overly ambitious projects. Question is if I can actually finish them in a timely manner.
Anyway, here's something I've been screwing around with the past few days and posting a ton of WIPs on Discord—a DD/Movie!Werehog model. Still needs a LOT of work, but it's starting to look pretty good.
Starting off with, here's a test animation I did of the bristling quills, then one of the eyes to show what they look like in bright or dark lighting. The glowing eyes are just an emission texture.
(Combined the clips since I can only post one video)
The eye models can't be rigged since they don't actually move, but I figured out I could move the position of the iris texture by using a UV warp modifier and just keyframing the offset values.
I snagged the eye texture right from that one Home Alone parody poster for Sonic 3. I cropped out the iris bit and painted over the reflection, then slapped it onto a white background with a slight noise texture. The eye mesh itself is from the original Werehog model.
I actually used the original teeth as well, but only as a starting point to sculpt with. This is what they currently look like.
Here's a closeup of the individual quills. The banding is meant to dither the blue and white sections and make them blend together more organically. I'll probably rough up the texture a bit and then tweak its UV placement on the quills so they're not identical, but for the most part, this is what I'm going for. The faint grainy texture is from the material itself.
And with that out of the way, here's a look at the full model.
If you're wondering why he's disgustingly buff, that's because the model's actually meant to have rendered fur, so what you're seeing is basically the base 'furless' anatomy. I want the muscle tone to subtly show through the fur of his upper arms and chest as well as the backs of his shoulders, so it has to be more defined in those regions.
I might need to actually make two different swappable models for his spikes—one where they're static and modeled, then one that's a clump of fur curves and loose quills that can actually bristle and flare out properly. I'm more worried about just making a model that looks good in a neutral position though, so I'm going with the modeled spikes. They'll be a base for the external fur and quills of his spikes to be layered over.
And now here's a closer look at his face.
Still needs work, of course. I'm trying to hit that fine line between it actually resembling Movie!Sonic while still being as close a visual adaptation of the original Werehog design as possible.
That being said, there's a few slight adjustments I've made to not only the face but the design as a whole. For example, the ears aren't going to be as curved, and while I'll build it out more since it's not low enough here, the brow ridge isn't going to overshadow the eyes as much. As for the body, the proportions are going to be a bit more balanced and less top heavy. And you might have noticed the back spikes—Movie!Sonic has three instead of two, but since DD!Sonic actually grows more quills whenever he changes, it doubles to six as opposed to Game!Sonic just having two in both forms. Why? I feel it helps balance out the design by filling in the area between his spikes and his tail a bit more.
Here's a side profile to show what I mean.
It also makes him generally look wilder and more animalistic. It's the same reason why I'm modeling his hands more closely after actual hedgehog paws. They're still human shaped, but they're mostly furred save for some grayish blue paw pads, and have actual claws as opposed to long nails. That should hopefully make them not look as gross or uncanny than if they looked entirely like human hands.
There's plenty more I could go over, but this post is already long enough as it is, so I'll call it a night and end it here. Mostly because it's literally the middle of the night and I'm tired. But I'll share more of this another time.
Easier said than done, but I really want to draw a CT scan of Sonic at some point. I mean like a volume render, where the different systems are rendered based on tissue density and their visibility can be toggled on and off by messing with density settings, or something like that. So basically, a multi-layer anatomy thing of everything, not just his skeleton and muscles and organs, but also his circulatory system and maybe even fat deposits.
Not sure if I'll actually end up doing all that, but I've sketched the skeleton and major organs so far at least.
I originally picked Movie!Sonic mostly because he's the only Sonic who has an organic design that would actually work in a CT scan. Then I realized that since he's literally just Movie!Sonic, I could actually do an internal comparison of both of DD!Sonic's forms, so—I also sketched a skeleton for DD!Werehog Sonic.
(Well actually, I mostly copypasted it, but who cares.)
Anyway, I've gone on a tangent long enough. Here's those sketches.
The proportions are off as hell, but I'll just resize some of it later. Still gives you a good idea of what Sonic's insides generally look like but also how even those would change during a shift.
Here's an update on that banner I'm working on. It's definitely still a WIP, but even then it's really starting to come together.
The lighting's not final, obviously. I'll make it colored and give it better highlights and shadows once everything else is done. What's here is just a placeholder for now.
You can tell I don't like drawing hands and shoes. I've been putting those off while inking the fur instead. At some point I'll also have to make a few loose quills and put those into Sonic's spikes.
Other than that? I'm actually surprised how on-model it is. There's probably a couple features that are slightly off, but I don't think anyone is actually going to notice.
Either way, while I'm at it, here's some closeups—
(Ignore the black bars, I'm too lazy to configure OBS just for some quick screenshots)
Not to keep posting unrelated stuff here, but I don't really have anywhere else to share it, so—
Here's some half-assed screenshots of that one werewolf model I'm working on. Still needs to be cleaned up in a few areas and have the teeth and tongue modeled, but the sculpt itself is pretty much done.
Depending on if my PC can actually handle it or not, I'm gonna try to render their fur. They're actually supposed to be entirely furred and fluffy, but until I get around to making said fur, they're gonna be hairless and gross looking.
The claws here are placeholders, once I'm done modeling the digits I'll attach better ones.
The eyes are technically also placeholders. I'll be texturing them to be a blend between human and wolf eyes for obvious reasons.
(I'm actually tempted to model them after my own for shits and giggles)
Glowing eyes aren't actually a canon part of this design, but I also figured out how to make their eyes glow in the dark anyway.
It'll probably be a while before I have this model finished—especially since I still have to finish some DD stuff—but after I get this rigged I'm hoping I'll be able to maybe do a really brief animatic or two with it. Mostly just to show how it'd sort of look in motion.
