Do you do a lot of research to make your characters look so real?

I use photographic references – my own and others – then use this information to create the anthropomorphic effect I look for. However, my characters are not actually all that realistic (except perhaps some in The Waterhole and the ones I have just completed for Eye to Eye) – it is an illusion resulting from textural detailing in the fur. Sometimes I make models of the characters out of clay and paint them before I begin making the pictures. I did this for all the main characters in TruckDogs.