Sketchdump pg19 Devan Werewolf

Everyone has their own rendition of werewolves. Lately, a lot of them look like near carbon copies of Goldenwolf's or Kyoht's howling beasties. I'm not saying I don't like Goldie or Ky's weres. In fact they helped inspire to me to keep drawing in high school. But you can only love a certain flavor of garou goodness before the previously fresh idea turns stale from being overdone.

So, I frequently try to fiddle with werewolf designs. There are SO many types out there. I'd like to see a universe where there's more than a single cookie-cutter type of lycanthrope. There's even more of a reason to have several types if your going with it being a contagious disease. Viruses mutate, why not werewolves too?

With this one in particular. I wanted to come up with something that wouldn't appear very intimidating at first glance. The entire time I was drawing this I thought of the phrase "a boy and his dog". Something that a little boy would more likely say COOL to rather than AHHH!!! But at the same time I wanted the said "boy and his dog"-werewolf to be capable of scaring the bajeezus out of a full grown man when presented right. I think I pulled it off with this.

I also wanted "fledgeling" werewolves to have a beginning form that works much like training wheels on a bike to put it simply. Any sort of metamorphosis takes a lot of energy. To make it slightly more probably, I wanted to have my weres evolve over time from a larval or puppy stage (example at top left of drawing). Starting off much closer to or being human sized an much more animalistic. Not only would it give that fresh new lycan a better chance at keeping a low profile but are less likely be be caught since they would be lighter and more easily squeeze out of tight situations. They would have a stronger instinct to flee rather than fight as there would be little experience with handling threats. Overtime however they would get larger and develop traits that would better fit their personality/strengths and weaknesses.

This design in particular is for my character Devan in a story I've been collaborating with Davidthedemon on for I think at least a year or more. I haven't been able to get myself to draw Devan's face because I've been feeling a lot of pressure about how it will be judged, as a final face design or not. So I end up just drawing his hair instead lol. I think of his hair as looking a bit wild and messy as though it consists entirely of cowlicks hurhur. Not quite curly in some spots and not quite wavy in others. This pisses Devan off to no end, and he won't let his mom cut it because it looks even worse when it's short.

Devan werewolf form design (c) CreatureGirl