Welp, before anybody has a cow, I know that this is not quite how a canine/vulpine ear rotates, but I'm looking for a generalized, cartoonified approach that allows for simple rigging without the necessity many corrective shapes.

Okay, so this ear is a separate object modeled from a disc. The issue with the previous ears was that the polygon flow was nowhere circular, and rotating the ear gave me all kinds of issues. Now that the distance between ears and eyes is a bit increased, I am able to make some corrections to the poly loops and improve them for animation. As is clearly visible, the base disc will still need to be connected to the actual head; it's most certainly not supposed to look like this

The actual solution will not involve the extreme rotation poses in the first and last image, but achieve much of the rotation through a twist of the ear in a poly loop farther up. In addition, there will be a bit of banking allowed to prick up the ears if needed, or to fold them down.

Folding will definitely need a corrective shape, as a real dog's ear is actually folding in the outer lower segments too. Some extremely cartoony shapes simply cannot be achieved with this approach, but that's not the goal anyway.

I also hope that the "rounder" edge of the ear will make the furring easier. The previous model required a separate hair patch for the edge of the ear, which was cumbersome. I didn't try it yet, so knock on wood.

...anybody notices that the outer ear flap is gone now?