Ok here is something i have been working on few a lil bit. Polar Bear. right now its at a little under 1200 polys. Still gonna model a mouth and eyes. Goal is under 2000 polys. The checkered areas are gonna be alpha'd fur. Any comments and suggestions would help me greatly.

Try and see if you can create convincing fur on the main mesh itself.
Then try and save the alpha channel stuff for last. Alpha channeled fur tends to look odd and out place because there's never enough of them.

It's looking pretty good.
The pose looks a little off center in the profile. It feels like the bear is ready to fall back and sit on its butt.

Looks like a nice start. Couple suggestions. The front legs look a little too far back, and the front feet are really thin. The whole back is curved, so he doesn't have any shoulders right now. And he's got one hell of a back end, maybe either shrink that down or move the legs back. Also, I suggest moving the poly's on his side that you're gonna alpha for fur down to where his legs meet his body. Right now unless you're looking at him head on your won't even see them since in a side shot it'd get lost in the rest of the fur.

I found two side shots that may help.

http://www.jostimages.com/bilder/preview...0000090030).jpg

http://www.northrup.org/photos/crap/...-and-cub-1.jpg

It's late and I'm very tired so I'm hoping that you're able to make some sense of all this.

Try and get some more anatomy into the model. Right now it looks like four smaller tubes stuck onto one larger tube. Use the reference Soccerman posted, along with any other pictures you can find.

Check out Jack Hamm's book, "How to Draw Animals". It's full of useful info on animal anatomy.

good suggestions from everyone, one thing i would do if i were you is give another loop around the legs, even though that is the rough shape a polar bear has at rest, their legs travel alot, and there needs to be more room for deformations.

Small update

better shot. sucks you can't go back and edit posts anytime you want.

Hey T3G, this is looking great. Good definition you threw into his legs. If you have a look at the two reference images posted, preferably this one:


You'll notice that their ass tends to be higher off the ground than their heads when they're standing. And that their mid back has a dip in it leading back up to his neck, then head.** Other than that, this is the only thing I can seem to see.

**This could already be done, as your model has his head posed down. Hard to tell.

Hmnn they are just cute, may want to check out how many toes they have, too many to model low poly but it can mean a second take on the shape of the feet too...

tpe

yea i have a pic of the bottom of the foot and i modeled some claws, the texture will show the bottom of the toes and stuff.