Texturing and showing the role of the animal in game/world

Animal Role:

Before texturing, it was important to establish what the role of this saddled animal would be. By establishing this it would allow me to hone in on an appropriate mood and add details that would suit the animal's purpose. 

My Shiba Inu dog is meant to act as a companion to whatever player it may come across; A lot of my inspiration on my initial design was oriented around people dressing up their own pets so I thought keeping along that theme would be both more relatable and realistic. More specifically I chose saddle elements that were reflective of a helpful camping companion, keeping a sleeping bag role on its back as well as useful storage pouches that would help the player store consumables perhaps. I thought that his scarf would be a cute edition to show he was ready for whatever conditions they were going into, and my plans for the bags would be that they would be adorned with small badges and patches to add personality. Most of these would be patches added on through texturing since the small badges might have been much more expensive overall, and I thought that having some rough stitching would be a cosy detail over the clean edges of all of them being badges.

Texturing:

I wanted most of the textures to be simple colour blocks since the dog itself is quite a small animal, and I thought having larger shapes be readable would be less chaotic. I kept the fur texture on the sheets minimal since I wanted to experiment with a fur shader to artificially add depth; Shiba's don't have large pronounced waves of fur, their coats are dense and fluffy so a shader to keep the silhouette felt most appropriate.

Base colours applied in max

Quick render in unreal

Badges Close Up