Week 3 - A 'wolfy' wolf

Continued Blocking Work-

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Initial Block is too Jackal Like from the front. Feedback from peers suggested the creature reminded them of Anubis.

Face needs to be much Thicker as seen in the two reference images below (Middle being a Jackal, which is thought to be what Anubis is based from.).

The positioning of the ears also needs to be further apart and lower in comparison to the top of the head.

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Revisions v02 :

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With the addition of a thicker mane the shape of the wolf from the front feels a lot sturdier and imposing. By arching the neck slightly as well the creature has a much more dynamic negative space.

The snout feels problematic due to how long it is looking at some more reference it feels it may need either shortening or fiddling with a bit.

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The difference in snout and eye placement varies a little from species to species. The wolves most likely seen by the creators of Fenrir would be Eurasian grey wolves, which originate in Europe and can be found in some scandinavian countries. The main difference is just the size difference between species. Although something to keep in mind for realism, as Fenrir is a mythological wolf I don't feel this stuff is too important for my build.

Another quick note on the block is that the ears need to be more rounded. This is how you can differentiate a coyote and wolf (so would begin to help remove the Anubis feel)

Pure Ref:

I thought I should mention the programme I am using to store all of my reference material, as I highly recommend it to anyone digitally creating artwork. Pureref is a free programme that allows you to create a huge ‘mood board’ of images which you can manipulate to show over the top of any other programmes.

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Thickening of the neck definitely makes the length of the snout feel more anatomically correct.

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Slowly adding the facial shapes. By blocking these shapes I am able to better get a grasp of the character itself.

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After speaking again with peers feedback suggested that the model wasn’t imposing enough to fit with the Fenrir character. I feel that this is mostly in the snout. The profile feels petite and weak. I am therefore going to play around with it’s depth.

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Once I complete this anatomically correct block I’m going to have to play around with the proportions to experiment with how they influence the character.

Okay, on closer inspection the proportions of the wolf's face are very wrong. From the front the issues are less obvious but from the side I definitely need to change the positioning of the ears, eyes and snout.

The eyes should never protrude further than the brow as mine does, with the ears appearing directly behind on top of the skull instead of behind it.

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Shortening the forehead and snout worked great, proportionally the sculpt looks far more realistic whilst still retaining a good silhouette.

Widening the face overall, particularly altering the placement of the eyes, has helped create more wolfy appearance compared to the previous example that felt more dog-like.

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Here I have made the face more angular and introduced more topology to the snout for a little more detail. I also prepared the mouth cavity for the gums and teeth using the poly masking tool. The teeth are going to be really important as I want Fenrir to have a constant slight snarl which will add to his aggressive character.

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The Mouth:

Firstly I’ve opened the jaw to a relatively relaxed open position to begin the insertion of the gums, teeth and tongue. This reference piece of a wolf with its jaws open was a brilliant find, clearly showing the anatomical lay out of the mouth.

Using Pure Ref I brought this image into my scene to use whilst sculpting.

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For the Canine's I've used the Bend arc transform tool with a basic cone. Playing with settings until arriving at a perfect shape. Once in the jaw I made some adjustments using the deformer tool to get the exact shape I needed.

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Once I had the first tooth in place I used the symmetry tool to duplicate it onto the other side of the model, this allowed me to work on both sides of teeth at once, saving a lot of time.

I used a system of duplicating, remeshing to the lowest poly count I could get that could still hold detail, then sculpting the tooth.

Duplicating the teeth saves so much time and allows for a uniform look. The large canines in this character are greatly exaggerated, but I thought this fit well with Fenrir’s imposing look.

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As speech plays an important role in my final product the mouth needs to intersect correctly. I tested this by combining the bottom jaw and removing the upper jaw flesh so I could see the teeth as I rotated the bottom jaw.

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I would then edit the teeth where needed resulting in this final look for the closed mouth:

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Overall the relaxed mesh looks like this:

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You can just see the teeth poking out from underneath the muzzle which I really love. Although this may cause a slight difference in the speech pattern of the wolf (maybe a slight lisp?).

Final Blockout:

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Final Blockout (Before combining mesh for rigging and High frequency detail):

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Important Notes:

Exporting

At home I am using Z brush Core 2020, the university is using Z brush 2019.

This means I need a way to successfully export my models from one programme to the other.

Zbrush Core 2019 versions will only open correctly in Zbrush 2019, so I will instead have to export all of my models to OBJs if I plan on using them across versions.

To do this in Zbrush the process is as follows -

Open Zplugin

Export Options

Export to separate Files (OFF)

Export to OBJ