Thank you so much for the compliment and the advice, I tried recoloring the sprite with all that in mind.
This is what I ended up with. I didn't change the style really bc I don't personally have much of an issue with that, my art tends to be more on the cartoony side than realistic. For the anatomy I was actually using a mix of wolf and german shephard references so that's probably where some of the doggish-ness comes from (breed standard german shephards have that sloping back that I thought would be nice to use to make the shoulders seem a little bigger and to make it look more attentive?? if that makes any sense, I think weird sometimes lol), so at least on that front I didn't do much either.
What I did change tho:
- Made and forced myself to stick to a much smaller palette, I think the body only has about 7 colors plus however many I used for the eyes, which I think was only 3 or so. Also comes with the perk that the darker and lighter fur isn't as different as it was before, so hopefully that makes the transition less harsh?
- Took the markings down a notch to make it look less like a husky because you were right about that lol, I looked harder at some wolves and tried to go off of that more than I had been before.
- Made the foreleg......wider? at least the shoulder part where you and a friend I asked told me an issue was
- Made the head a little bit smaller so it would be just a Touch more realistic and maybe a little less like a furry (common problem for me lol)
- And didn't go as wild with the texturing. I really went to town on that the first time because I was afraid of it looking too flat if I left too much unbroken color, so I tried to reign that in this time just to see what would happen, I'm not sure if it looks Better or not per say on that front but I don't think it looks worse so that's something at least maybe??
Does it look any better with these changes? Is there anything I should go back on, or does anyone see anything else I should probably try doing to it?