Untitle Entry Contest (semicit-) (CLOSED) (CLOSED)

Well, I haven't a title for my idea yet.
Maybe I can edit it lately -I mean, it isn't against rules, I guess...?
Anyway. I found this contest only two days ago, so in between I tried to search some nice concepts and reference.
Finally, I thought a base. This one:
"The protagonist is a kitsune cub, a Japanese quick-change fox that can have up to nine tails. The puppy is trapped in a middle phase between the human and the fox form: so he appears as a child of about two years, but with animalistic features and tails [like the protagonists of the film Cats of 2019]. The baby is in the grass and is bent over in front of a pool of water, which reflects something monstrous, but not very visible.
The puppy clearly has something wrong: the expression is full of pain and terror, it seems that the blackish liquid between his hands on the ground is his vomit, his very pale skin has unnaturally black furrows and his eyes are completely blackened and devoid of life. There are tentacle-like protrusions in its tails and back".

I don't love very much gore and body horror, I admit it, so I prefer to work in a more underhand way, playing with the abuse of uncanny valley and with a disturbing way.
I don't know if it can be a winning way for approaching this contest, but for me it is surely the most fun way.
Btw, there are my reference.

Sounds cool! And yes, absolutely... You can share your thought process, workflow, and WIP images along the way. 
That's a fun way to go about it. Thanks for participating in the contest.  

Btw, wip about blockout.

Bruh, dynameshing things.
I like the fact that it is taking on an "uncanny" aspect more by my (in) ability than by direct will, lol.

Bruh.
I have finished the retopology and still I haven't a title.
Sigh.

Looking pretty cool. Thanks for sharing your progress.  

Bruh. Random wips. Fur is a bad person.
Maybe it can be more cute than uncanny now, but... hm, I guess that a missing context makes the difference between the two moods.
(...huh, maybe I find a title. "Fur is a bad person". Lol)

Good. I finished the texturing part: near the deadline I still have to posing the model, lol.
However, as no one reads to me here (apart from the good Foxie <3 ), I use this space as a diary.
I learned to manage UDIMs well thanks to this puppy's body: with only one uv map, even at 4K the textures sucked. Now with different UV maps it looks a little better. How nice!

"How nice" part two, I finally found the title for this job. As soon as I understand how to do it (if it can be done), I will also change the title of the topic.
"Vois sur ton Chemin" is the title of a song featured in the film "Les Choristes".
It has absolutely nothing "horror", quite the contrary. But I decided to adopt its text because of the basic sense that this work has acquired over time.
As soon as I have finished everything I think I will deepen the question, both in the final comment with the final renderings, and with a change in the very first comment.
Many here have taken the concept of horror in its most classic sense: and that's okay!
I started with the idea of deepening the discourse of the uncanny valley: something that I want to continue to develope together with an additional, perhaps more intimate, component, linked to broken and abusive childhood. After all, what's more horrific than something that hits a child? An innocent of this magnitude?

Well, it will be a reflection for later ...

"However, as no one reads to me here apart from the good Foxie"  
I actually am surprised at the limited engagement with people not leaving comments. 
Many hundreds of views on some of the entries. Yours has 246 so far. 

This is turning out pretty cool. 
I, for one, enjoy the WIP images to see how people come up with stuff. 
Thank you for sharing.  

Ah, yes, updates.
I'll be concise because I'm a little sleepy and wouldn't want to fall asleep on the keyboard ...

OH, I FINISHED.
Last minute...

...Anyway!

Ok, I'll go in order.
As already written above, I went from a simple "duh, I don't like classic horrors, I take something pure and I corrupt it" to "oh look, the idea I have fits in well with the real abuses on some children!".
Very light topic ...
The idea came to me, as I had anticipated, while listening to one of the compositions written by Bruno Coulais for the film "Les Choristes": a rather old French film that I saw as a child, but that has always impressed me both for the soundtrack than for the central theme.
Precisely, broken childhoods: the protagonists are a group of difficult children locked up in a boarding school, with an inhuman director and a new supervisor who wishes to take care of them through singing.
In the meantime, I was refining the baby model to pass it on to Substance without any problems, so I thought it would be nice to tie it up with that song "Vois sur ton chemin".
I copy and paste the English translation:

"Look out on your path | Children who are lost, forgotten | Lend them a hand | And lead them | Towards another future.
Feel in the middle of the night | A surge of hope | Fervor of life | The road to glory.
Childish happiness | Erased and forgotten too fast | A golden light shines forever | And the end of the road."

In a way the work I did is like a "bad ending" of the song: no one has lent a hand to a little one who was in dire need of it, and now he cries and rots at the end of his road.
No golden light at the end of the path for him, just the dim, cold moonlight.

I have always found it interesting to sew human vicissitudes and passions to non-real contexts through art.
I believe it is a particular way to involve oneself or someone else and facilitate their "ascension", more or less.
Through catharsis, I say: through a powerful artist's work, willy-nilly we are overwhelmed by what the artist has linked to that work.
Thus we learn more about ourselves, perhaps even in a painful way. Or maybe not, but that's very individual, I guess.
For me it was like this with this little one: making it was a beautiful experience that made me try so many new or reinvigorated things, which allowed me to brush up on a good movie and to think about ... well, personal things, hehehe.
I hope that for those who have read so far it has been the same.
In the next few days I think I will calmly file everything: so I can insert it in the portfolio and spam it around a bit. I saw that this forum is implementing nice little things, maybe I'll post stuff here too.

Well, thanks again to everything, bye!

(PS All the trees come from Quixel Bridge, and the HDRI from the angels of Poly Haven. These are the only things that I don't create). I don't know if it is necessary, but telling it seems to me quite fair).

FINAL RENDER:


Clear corneous:


Light Variations:

This turned out really cool. And I can definitely see hints of all of the reference material you first posted. 
Well done. Thanks for sharing all of your WIP images, and your interesting commentary along the way.