Wereboar - any advice on fur?

[spajjder]

Hi.

I tried to draw a big man boar, or wereboar. I wonder if anyone has any advice on how to make it improve, especially wonder about the fur.

[eliddell]

[Rusty artist, please take all crit with a grain of salt.]

Boars resemble domestic pigs, meaning that they have hooves (not claws), their tails are pretty thin for their size, and the ends of their snouts are bare skin.  So I'm kind of getting "random fantasy monster" vibes from this rather than "wereboar" vibes.  That isn't necessarily bad, but it may not be what you wanted to get across.

Fur patterns . . . study the ones on a real animal.  Here's one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Wildschein%2C_N%C3%A4he_Pulverstampftor.jpg  On most animals, fur fans out from the eyes and snout, goes sort of from front to back on the body and diagonal-ish on the forelegs, and then kind of curves down the back legs.  It looks to me like the worst fur-related sin you've committed is the tufts sticking out from the top of the left arm right near the body.  Those should go.  The rest seems reasonable.

Other than that, the left tusk looks like it's too long and should be pointing more forward and less up, and the arm anatomy just looks strange.  The shading on the upper right arm makes it look like there's another joint below the shoulder, and the left wrist looks uncomfortably twisted.  Not quite sure what you're doing with the shading on the chest, either.  But maybe it's just me.

[spajjder]

Thank you. That is indeed good points.

I will try to check those parts out a bit more. When you say left, do you mean from our perspective or the pigs actual left?

Really appreciate you taking the time. I was indeed mostly confused about the arms and chest. Perhaps its better to just darken the chest spot... I think the arm closer to us look ok but the other the hand might be turned a bit strange

[eliddell]

I was naming sides from the creature's perspective, so when I said "right", I meant the side closer to the viewer.

I think what's bothering me about the right arm is that the shadow delineating the muscle right below the shoulder would be more V-shaped on a human.

[spajjder]

Hi again.

Did some slight modifications. does this look any better?



Changed hand, the shadow under the shoulder, the hooves,

[eliddell]

Left hand's somewhat better, left tusk is definitely better, chest is better.  Feet look a bit more boarlike now (hooves would normally be dark, but introducing more colours at this point is probably bad).

Here's a quick paintover that should better explain what I meant about the right arm: 

Removing the deepest shadow makes the upper arm look more like the rigid single unit it is.  (I also moved the elbow out and back a bit, because it looked right to me, but I'm not absolutely sure it was necessary.)

For the same reason, it might be good to thin out the shadow on the chest—the fur (which is now quite interpretable) is going to cast some shadow, but should it really be that much?

[spajjder]

Alright. Yea I see what you mean.
I really like heavy shadows, like in Darkest Dungeon, but perhaps I overdid it. I think I wanted it to look like the hair was like a big tuft that hanged over a bit, so that it created a shadow . I did a wolf as well and I think it has the same problem, not sure if its against the forum rules to upload it here though.

I appreciate your advice and example   Maybe I should study a bit of anatomy before I do pixel art hehe

[eliddell]

Deepening the shadows is okay, but you've got to remember that the shadows are there to indicate form.   In this case, you were shading the shadow between the muscles as heavily as the actual joint creases (and not being entirely clear about how the muscles fit together).  That was why it didn't work.

I think I saw your wolf (on the reddit PixelArt sub, but I only lurk there).  Unfortunately, all I remember is the fur.