Hey guys, I wanted to revise my old crazy dog tutorial based on the crazy dogs from Elden Ring. They're these giant evil dogs but they have small t-rex arms. They look like this.
To me they look closest to some sort of giant chihuahua due to the proportions, so that's what I'll try to achieve here. We need a sketch but first we need to decide on a pose. I want it to look super hungry for human flesh so it's going to be staring into the camera like it wants to eat you but I also want to show his back so that's why he's at an angle. His mouth is going to be wide open with his tongue dangling around and drooling. With that said, here's a sketch!
The dog has pretty dark fur but due to the red sky of their habitat, they appear to be redder. They're pretty unhealthy creatures so we should make them look skinny and starved by showing the spine and a few ribs bulging. I tested out a few drops of spit flying out of his mouth.
Keep experimenting until you get something decent. I gave him some stronger highlights to make his various shapes more visible. I wanted to emphasize the bone structure of his head here so I gave him strong brows and cheek bones.
I like the eye we have so far, it looks kind of infected and blind but in the game, there are some variants of these dogs that have red eyes and they're pretty spooky so I love them. Here is a quick edit with red glowing eyes.
The final result took on several subtle changes but I'll try to explain them. First thing you might notice is the sword in his back. I thought since there's an area in the game where knights are battling these creatures, it would be interesting to stick a sword in has back. He also has wild demon ears now that almost resemble demon horns. These changes are not accurate to the original dogs but we're just having fun here so it doesn't matter too much. I tweaked the brightness contrast in some areas a bit more. I really wanted to emphasize the details on his head and make it seem larger, I think the big ears help exaggerate that. I wanted his eyes to be more fearsome and I think the shadows around them help with that, the shadow on his main eye is supposed to represent a battle scar. I clustered up most of the ribs. I decided they were a little too noisy and cluttered, especially with the sword being there now, but we can still see his spine bones sticking out. The little droplets of spit flying out of his mouth looked too unnatural so I removed them. It would make more sense if he was barking but that's not the case here. So those are all the changes I can think of and here is the final sprite.
And here is an old animated scene I drew him in a long time ago. He appears mostly the same in scene but there's no sword or spit coming out of his mouth.
So that covers this doggo. I'll have to figure out what tutorial I'll write about next so keep checking by. Hopefully I will post it sometime this week but anyway, see you until then!