because a human stands up on two legs, and a wolf stands on four. then it looks more natural if the gestalt is standing in a possition that can easily change between the two of em.
but thats just my opinion.
That's mostly my opinion too. I think we should avoid the term "hunched" because it makes it seem like something extreme, like a hunchback, rather than what I think most of us are imagining.
What I imagine is this: the spine would be mostly vertical, but the neck would tend to lean forward, to put the nose out front more, especially when the gestalt form is (1) running or (2)standing still and leaning against something with the front paws. Also, the way a part-wolf pelvis would be put together would tend to encourage a slight forward slant, so the more lupine the pelvis became during the shapeshift, the more of a tendency to lean forward.
As far as height goes, the legs of a big wolf would be almost as long as the legs of a normal-sized human, so the waist level of a gestalt form would be almost the same as the waist level of its human form, in most cases (if we think that the inches added by the gradually lengthening digitigrade foot would balance out the inches lost in the leg part that is between heel and crotch. Otherwise, as in the case of a werewolf that kept a plantograde stance in gestalt form, the legs would become shorter while the feet became long like clown-feet and very hard to walk plantigrade with).
So, the leg transformation should not add any significant height.
The neck of a wolf is longer than that of a human, so this could add height to the gestalt form, depending on how much the neck shifts when changing to gestalt form. The ears of a wolf, are, I think, about 3-4 inches long. That would add height, at least in perception (if your ears stick above the top of your head, do you measure your height as to the top of your ears?).
Another possibility is the torso. Wolf torsos are proportionately much longer than human torsos. So, if a normal-sized human turned into a big wolf, I think that a partially-changed torso would add at least a few inches in height to the gestalt form. Of course, I think most of us are envisioning the torso as the least-changed part of the gestalt form, and I think that it would also create practical difficulties in special effects if we had to find actors for the werewolf suits who had unusually long torsos. So, probably not more than two or three inches from that.
Another route we can take is to look at wolf measurements. How high would a big wolf be if it were standing perfectly vertical? We could determine that height, and then figure that since the gestalt form is about halfway through the transformation, then it would be about halfway between the wolf-form height when on hind legs and the original human height.
I've read somewhere that even small wolves are usually about as tall as a person if they put their paws on your shoulders. I'm not sure if I remember this exactly right, but I do know that the biggest wolf skins on record are about nine feet long, measured from nose tip to the toes of the hind feet. Subtract from that nine feet a foot because skins can be stretched much more than the real animal, and then subtract most of the head length (because gestalt height is not measured to the nose tip, but to the top of the head or the top of the ears). With this, you get a maximum of about seven and a half feet for the biggest full-wolf form. If your human form is big, say six feet tall, then the biggest gestalt form that you could produce by this method would be about six feet, nine inches. And that would be your maximum. Most werewolves would probably be at least a few inches shorter in gestalt form, and people who were short in human form, especially females, would find it hard to achieve a gestalt form taller than six feet.
Altogether, I don't really see the gestalt form being more than about a foot taller than the original human form of the werewolf, and I don't see it being eight feet tall. If it is hugely taller than the human form, then I think that we would be talking about a gestalt form that was much thinner and more elongated than most of us would prefer, but in that case I imagine that it would be too close to true wolf to be running around on two legs anyway, so that, technically, it would not be a gestalt form.