WIP + joint problems (on the model, not me!) (Patreon)

I've been trying to figure out the best topology to fit the dragon's pose range. I want a balance between something humanoid and something feral. I redid the shoulder and chest area's topology and the deformation is better, but it still has some problems! One of the difficult parts of modeling and rigging anything is the shoulders...

(above- bad wrist and not so good shoulder deformation!)

One of my favorite feral dragon artists, Crittermatic, does a great job, but in some of their models some of the shoulder (or other joints) suffer from a kind of... mushiness? I suppose is the word.

(source: https://e621.net/posts/2972386?q=crittermatic)

Though I think these are some of their earlier models- one of crittermatic's other dragon characters has fantastic joints.

(source: https://e621.net/posts/2658439?q=crittermatic) 

Beautiful shoulder and elbow definition! Not to mention the knees and ankles also have wonderful shape. In the case of elbows and knees, it's a bit simpler to get those looking more natural (as in, the character actually has bones inside of them). But the shoulder area is a lot more difficult in both humanoid, feral or anything else that has shoulders because arms have such enormous range to them- They can rotate in a wide range of angles! Even the setup for that character seems to be have issue at extremes.

Now to be clear I'm not dogging on anyone- I think crittermatic is incredibly talented and I hope I can reach that level of skill. But shoulders are just universally difficult to get right >_> and shoulders are different for what range of motion the character needs.

In my case, as I said, I want a balance between humanoid and feral range of motion on the arms. I want my dragon to be able to pick things up (which is why he has thumbs!) but to also have a feral look about him- not just like, a humanoid walking on all 4s.

Here's a test of the dragon sitting down! The tailhole also needs some more elbow grease (hehe...)

Anyway, I'm still going to keep at it obviously! But that's what's holding me up atm. REALLY want to do something with him using a toy like in the gif >_> like... I want to animate that and put sound to it ASAP.

But I still have plenty to figure out when it comes to ferals...

Also, probably will be giving him hair all the way down his back/spine to his tail? I'll do that to see how it looks... I think it would look really cool though!

Edit: Changed the title because it was "join" instead of "joint" (and the joke is like, joint problems is ambiguous- could be about me or about something else. So, the punchline was that the model has joint problems, not me! At least not yet. I'm hopefully not going to have joint problems for awhile, though I am getting up there in the years ^^;)