Character Design : Dauntless Wolf

Character design for Agent-Pits.

Alex wanted a Dauntless inspired, fire-themed design for a canine character; I came up with this, with some more input from hir along the way.

Details:
I used the Ethiopian wolf for an anatomical base, because they're cool as heck and more interesting than just a generic canine (sick burn).
I also decided to completely disregard what Alex had in mind for the colour scheme because I'm a dick, and went with black/dark grey fading upwards into muddy red for a smokey, firey feel without being too obvious or obtrusive in the imagery. The wing marking goes pretty heavily against my usual natural design aesthetic BUT HEY dogs with hair aren't exactly natural either so I went for it -- Alex loves wings, and I thought it'd be an awesome tie-in to the Dauntless ideals and practices. The other cream markings were added to help ground the wing mark, plus a little under the eye to make the iris really pop.
I'd wanted to make the hair some shade of purple or something to go with typical Dauntless aesthetic, but unfortunately most colours just clashed too much with the colour scheme, and while I liked the look of white hair it just felt a little off for the character. Alex ended up picking a bright orange and I love how it looks, awesome call on hir part. Likewise for the eyes, s/he wanted to stick to the fire theme for them, and it worked out perfectly.
The pseudo-tattoo is the Dauntless symbol from the Divergence series, for those of you not in the know; Alex prefers the one used in the film, so I used that as a guide and stayed faithful to its style. I chose to do my own version of it though, because I honestly think that the one they use is pretty sloppily designed.