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FablePaint β Wolves on Brown Paper
Published: 2011-03-10 09:11:04 +0000 UTC; Views: 12850; Favourites: 758; Downloads: 131
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Description
Started as a practice page since I was having some trouble getting the angle of nose to eyes right on the 3/4 view, but then turned into this silly whatever featuring Swifty and other still in development BBA characters. The hyper-detailed and realistic sketches are mostly drawn from photos (since this was for practice). The rest are not.Sometimes I wish all the wolf photos uploaded to various photo sites weren't of these picture perfect captive bred wolves in winter coats. Yeah that's gorgeous, but that's not how they look all year round NOR is it exactly how they look in the wild. And there's rarely any way of determining whether the photo is of a wild wolf or just another fat zoo wolf you see on every wolf calendar in existence >
Also breaking in my new brown sketchbook, white pen, and pentel stylo pen. Mark McDonnell tipped me off about pentel stylo pens. They're so much fun, like the best combination of a calligraphy felt-tip pen and a ballpoint. Wonderful line quality!
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Comments: 81
One of the few people on DA I don't mind a wolf overload from. Very lovely sketches.... lines work s amazing beyond reason.
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I personally like more realistic wolves like this than those who are pink and fluffy (maybe not pink.. but you get the point), I read the comments between you and whisperpntr, and I think you two are right about that point 
And I totally love these sketches! Specially when you added the fur and the highlights. 
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I actually have nothing against pink AND fluffy, but my feeling is that if you're doing a certain kind of story, the visual elements need to support that story. Pink fluffy wolf running around in cartoon land getting to zany antics and being generally comedic fits wonderfully. Same character stuck in a grim gritty realistic landscape faced with death and destruction, not so much. Everything needs context.
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Yes you are completely right about that, and Kay Fedewa's style in BBA is good too. But as you say, this isn't a comedy, and it wouldn't hurt if you do use a realistic-looking style, since this doesn't go beyond the BBA style. Maybe I am wrong but I think you should keep the style you have begin with. Besides, I don't think that this will keep the 12 year old girls away either so to speak.
You will nail this easily.
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Well there's a certain amount of expressionism that requires anthropomorphization of canine facial characteristics to properly convey them. I don't want to steer TOO far into realism because as dark as the story might get, it's still supposed to have a good level of humor and be more about the human condition, not canines. If I were doing a comic of "Call of the Wild", the ability to express things in a human way through animal characters is utterly moot, if not counterproductive.
Anyway, these are merely experiments and not reflective of any style for the story mostly anyway. What you see here is practice sketches to get a better feel for anatomy and angles. It's the kind of thing I continuously go back to in all my sketchbooks for any subject (people, horses, dinosaurs, etc)
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Yes you are right about that too. For me it seems like you have a pretty good view over your work and know what you are doing. All I wanted was to give you some feedback and let you know what some of the audience maybe thinks. It's probably some more that feel the same way about the style as I do.
The comic seems to be in a good way on to the success and the help you get from whisperpntr will make it awesome.
Oh I didn't think about that at all, i'm sorry.
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If we're thinking of the target audience BBA used to attract you will almost always need to have prettified leads with a plumper coat. I mean, there is a certain beauty in the shaggy sad looking wolves I've seen online. But the original audience may bitch and moan at the travesty of not drawing perfect, winter coat, gray wolves.
That said I do think a gritty-fied, realistic bba would be awesome.
As for summer coats I found a few samples by googling wolf mange and here's a page with a few angles after googling wolf summer coat
[link]
Where they look funky in spring is, as you noted, much harder to find
[link]
[link]
[link]
Hope you don't already have all of these already
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Well considering we don't design around a target audience, but what we think the story needs, then I'm gonna defer to our design sense and not the aesthetics of 12 year old girls. I'm willing to bet they're more intelligent than that anyway and will read for a good story and not just for cute pretty wolves.
Those are good pictures, thank you!
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lol I had a feeling you would think that but selfishly I just wanted to hear you say it.
and glad they helped! I love photographs that show the truth, even if it's brutal and sad.
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Aw, your wolf drawings are beautiful β₯ I think the hardest part of the canines face is the nose. Noses are weird :/
Yeah, I suppose "natural" looking wolves would be hard to find, but you can't blame anyone for favoring a shinning poofy wolf over a worn-down scraggly looking thing.
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Nice sketches!
---
"There he goes. One of Godβs own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live and too rare to die.β- Raoul Duke (βFear & Loathing in Las Vegasβ, 1998)
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I think you should go with the more realistic style for the reboot I like the realistic swifty the best
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Yeah that was Kay's idea. Her story became more serious and self-reflective and she wanted a style that was more realistic to not distract from that.
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So will there be an entirely different plot from the original everyone is familiar with? Or will the reboot start as a prequal comic?
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Well you'll definitely recognize elements, but the story is more where we wanted it to go but didn't have the initial experience to make it go that way. Basically, you live and grow and apply what you know.
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I know exactly what you mean. Have you thought about writing it in book format so you can get the story out on paper. Thats what ive done and it really helps with getting the image of the story in your head. Really helps when your ready to start churning out comic pages.
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Are the white pens you used for this "pentel stylo pens" too? I always have trouble finding a good white pen. XD
Amazing artwork, by the way. Strange how any doodle of yours just knocks me off my feet with it's amazing-ness.
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no that's a uniball signo, it's not that special. It's just slightly more opaque than your typical gel pen. But gen pens are just as good.
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Okiedokie. Thank you. ^^
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what is the brand name of the pens that you use. because im looking for som
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it's in the desc
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Rawr! lol I LOVE this page and all the expressions!
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I love how the top is realistic then it breaks down to stylized at the bottom.
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These look fantastic!
I'm just wondering if and when you may make a mistake as you draw so close together what eraser (and easily erased pencil) you use...
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this is all pen so...no erasing. And I just draw until I can't.
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Great! Thank you for the information!
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I really love how Swifty is looking in your drawings. Her ears look so soft, like you could touch them and they'd be like velvet or fleece. Very nice work.
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I love all the expressions! XD
I have a book I got from Yellowstone that shows only wild wolves in the pictures (it even says so on the cover). Though there are a lot of smaller ones that would only be somewhat decent for pose referencing, many of them are pretty close up and might help with studying "wild fur". I forgot what it's called but it's probably hiding somewhere obvious in my room with my other wolf books and should be too hard to find.
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These are gorgeous
The white highlights really help bring them to life
the wolf outlined in red's my favourite ^-^
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Feel free to use any of the wolf photos i have for refs. love your style, keep it going.
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What is the status on the BBA? Are you revamping the whole series and starting over or are you working from where it was left?
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You did the expressions on the wolves very well.
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i love how it kind of fades from realistic to cartoony as ig goes down the page.
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You are so inspiring! How do you keep such a balance between photorealistic and cartoon? I always seem to want to stretch my drawings to the max, and I can't tell if that's just what some might call my 'style' or if I'm just straying down an easier path.
Either way, you seem to have it DOWN!
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It's more of an artistic choice, really. I want to emphasize certain spots so I make a conscious choice about how I'm going to change it. Sometimes you just need to slow down and think.
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Great sketches! What brand of sketchbook do you use? The one with brown paper?
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Go find Jim Brandenburg's works if you want wild wolves.
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How much would a sketch sheet like this cost from you?
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I guess $30, I'd have to find some toned paper though that isn't in my sketchbook.
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this is awesome
Sometimes if I can't find a good ref from images, I look up videos of wild animals. There are a lot of good ones on the Getty images site.
Anyway these are really cool. I love your sketches, even the way you put them together on a page makes a nice image all in itself.
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THIS... this is how I want to be able to draw one day. To be able to make them look that realistic, yet show that much emotion in them... that is what I hope to be able to do one day.
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