Ok, so this is what I have so far, I’m on Blender 2.73b now and got my model rigged and fur combed:
This is the Material and Texture settings, I’m not sure how to set up the texture for the fur’s Coordinates to Strand/Particle but I’m not sure if I’m doing it right. I used two textures, one for the skin/mesh and one for the hair/fur (the tutorials I watched were not clear):
Here is the tail up close, in Particle Edit I used Puff (Add) and Length (Grow):
Continued…
Also any advice on material settings for the mouth, tongue, teeth? Does it look real?
And of course, howling and running:
Any comments and criticism, particularly to improve fur particles, welcomed. 
Here are my takeaways from the latest wolf:
Overall, looking really good.
The fur looks pretty good. You need more around the mouth. It’s shorter hair there but still pretty dense. You could also increase the strand thickness everywhere, it’s a quick way to thicken the coat up.
The mouth, teeth, tongue and nose need work. They are screaming CG.
a) The mouth needs more hair around it, shorter whitish hairs.
b) The nose needs bump for the pores. You will not ever sell the nose without a normal map. It’s fast and easy to do, and if you haven’t used normal maps now is your time.
b2) The nose should blend into the surrounding skin more, and not have a hard edge.
b3) Wolves and others very often have a patch of pink skin right in the middle of the nose going up and down, sometimes it forms a triangle.
c) The teeth. They are too white and not glossy enough. Push them towards yellow, and you probably should uv or vertex paint them so the part closest to the gums is darker and yellower. More gloss.
tounge, looks procedural and not right, consider an image texture with bump.
Overall I think the fur should be crazier and wilder (more randomness in the children) the silhouete is pretty smooth and a real wolf is gouing to have a soft/fuzzy edge due to the wildness of the fur.
Also in your render settings, you may want to increase the gaussian filter (anti alisaing) is will soften everything and give you less hard edges everywhere. This kind depends on how the backplates are shot. but from a more cinematic standpoint the snow and tree are quite soft and aliased, whereas the wolf is CG super sharp. I have not used it is BI, but it’s in render setting, anti aliasing, try increaing the filter width from 1 to 1.2, 1.6, 2…
The wolf is great, and you’re in the final stretch now! Going for realism is like that whack-a-mole game. You fix one thing and 3 more pop up. Good luck!
Here’s a photoshop mock up of my ideas:
Ok I will do that tonight, the teeth, nose, and bend the tooth.
I removed a lot of the fur around the lips because a few other people said it looked better, now I think I’m confused as if I should have more or less fur around the lips. I will up the AA as well, it was set to 8.
Just one question about the teeth and nose, is there any way to texture them without painting? or do I need an image map for each tooth?
You know in Hollywood every actor here has perfect white CG-looking teeth, right? ;D
Well there is Gary Busey… :evilgrin:
LOL yes, so I tried to match the teeth. 
I added layering to the textures and bumpmap to the nose, I still think the teeth’s Material is still not quite there yet though, but I did Vertex Paint some plaque/yellowing:
OMG that’s funny.
Nice improvements.
Tongue is still looking funky, shape and material need some love. I think you should try an image texture. The bottom image looks much better in terms of shape, but the one above it the tongue gets too thin at the end and too thick inside the mouth. Are they the same tongue, is there shapekey on that?
On the lamp you’re using, I might turn the size up some, to give softer shadows. Super hard shadows are a noon day sun in arizona type thing, and a cg giveaway. I’m not exactly sure how BI handles that though.
Ok, thanks. 
I’ll have to experiment more with BI’s lights. I have the tongue rigged so I can make it puffy or thin, I probably just posed it bad, I’ll make the tip thicker and try an image texture as well.
