Hello! Could you do a tutorial on the anatomy of centaur-like beings (half four legged being half human) and how to make intentional misproportions that come with merging beings and make them look purposeful?? Ily ❤️

Classic mythological creatures such as the centaur is a stable in many fantasy universes. And for good reason, their design is simply fascinating. 

I personally have a soft spot for any taur creature that mixes unconventional animals with humans, as well as some of the classic human/animal hybrids seen dotted around folklore ( and frequently use these ideas for my own creations ). Though, as it is when you glue a human and an animal together, the structural “integrity” of the resulting creature requires quite a lot of suspension of disbelief to really justify. 
Especially with combinations in which the human half substitutes the head of a quadruped ( four legged creature ). We can usually look beyond it for the sake of the story and the storyworld. However, if you want to make taurs look like they “could” exist and work in a more “realistic” context, then here’s a few pointers. 

This is by no means an extensive list, it’s just a few things i’ve picked up on over the years when designing creatures, especially taurs.  

http://www.supercoloring.com/da/tegninger-til-farvelaegning/centaur

Let’s use the centaur as our base
You can apply the following tips to just about any creature that you think could benefit from the anatomical adjustments. The centaur is just a good “blank canvas” for us to work with. So let’s see. 

The centaur is made up of two halves, the lower half of a horse and the upper half ( torso and head ) of a human. These two halves blend together seamlessly at the base of the horses ‘neck’ and the human’s pelvis. 

Now there’s almost always a few glaring ‘issues’ that i pick up on when seeing centaurs in media, and it has something to do with the placement and lean of the human half. In this particular illustration ^, the human half is perched at the base of the horse’s neck, like any other traditional taur. -But- the human half’s slightly forward placement and forward lean shifts the point of gravity in front of the horsehalf’s legs, and puts immense strain on the backmuscles, as there is no supporting tissue to lift or lower the human torso. 

https://narnia.fandom.com/index.php?title=Lightning_Bolt&showall=1

I tried to look for a better picture but couldn’t find any, so sorry about the poor quality. 
Lighting Bolt here has a very prominent case of what i just described. The torso is propped forward due to how the designers made him a direct extension of the horse’s neck, which would naturally lean forward too. 

Though this can come across as decent looking on a child character, who is rather skinny, and probably always in some kind of motion. The default pose of a character like this, would be one of drooping the human half in front of the horse’s half due to the lack of structural support (musclemas) that would default the character to stand upright when idle. Which would look a little odd. Afterall the human spine is not made to hold itself at a 45 degree angle whenever we relax. In fact, that’ a hugely detrimental posture to maintain for extended periods of time.  

What’s more

The direct fusing of the horse’s neck with the human torso ( and thusly fusing the two spines together in their original shapes ), means that the creature’s spine is ultimately seperated into two, which leaves a lot of strain on the particular point where the two spines connect. This can cause massive issues for the taur when moving around or doing high-intensity activities such as running ( and don’t even get me started on lifting things ). 

If we were to address this problem, we’d have to make a few adjustments. 

^  Firstly, we want to make sure that the front of the human’s torso align’s directly with the horse’s. Like this, we place all the point of gravity right between the horse’s legs, and not somewhere in front of it. 
On top of this, we are going to want to have the human half leaning back a little bit, so that, once relaxed - the creature will hang back towards the horse’s half, and not in front of the itself.. 

Additionally, i’ve added more mass to the legs to make sure they could carry the top half. Now: horses do have notoriously frail legs, so if you want to keep the disproportion of skinny legs that’s up to you, i personally just prefer my taurs looking somewhat robust (though contrasting a heavy top with a very skinny set of legs could potentially make for an interesting sihlouette in more abstract styles ). 

Furthermore, i slapped on a long tail to counterbalance the weight from the creature’s front. This is to distribute the weight of the creature more evenly. As well as giving the taur a “ rudder” that can help it direct itself when running. 

This also means that we can rid ourselves of the gnarly weak point in the fusing of the two spines. Now we can draw an elongated spine that reaches all the way from the human head to the tip of the tail. This is, technically speaking, a more sustainable structure that won’t snap easily under stress. 

Now, i mentioned something about mass

I mentioned earlier that there was no musclemass to support the lowering and lifting of the human head. A lack of this mass would mean that the human half was restrained to sitting rather statically on the horsehalf, only able to move its upper half ( above the ribcage potentially ). This makes for an immobile creature. 

So to counter this, we add a heaping helping of mass at the base of the human’s spine, and the back of the horse’s “neck”. This muscle would work somewhat like our bicep. Pulling and relaxing to allow the human half to lift or lower itself. Sure, it probably won’t ever be able to reach a 90 degree bend like we humans can, but with just a little bit of mass, they’ll at least be able to move a little bit. 

Naturally; the more mass you add to this lump - the more likely it is that they’ll be able to bend forward more, consider this bit a little bit like a rubber band, that slims up when the taur leans forward, and bulks up when they lean back. .  

Here’s another fun thing
Taurs in movies are typically pretty shapely, slender or muscular creatures. And that’s all fun and games - anyone who knows me and my art will tell you that i love buff people. But there’s so many ways one can pick and mix between bodytypes and hybrid blends. 

I personally love studying the specific subspecies of horse/cow/animal so that i can find just the right breed that would fit with the character or creature i’m making. Like matching heavy build characters with draftshorses, or sleek, petite characters with breeds such as the Akhal-Teke. 

The point is that you can make a creature look really interesting by matching out the bodytypes between horse and human ( and opposite, contrast really heavy build horse-breeds with really sleek human tops, or vice versa, if you know how to work your sihlouettes and shapes) .Matching bodytypes to breeds would also make sense in an anatomical context, as the creature itself would distribute mass somewhat evenly across the two halves by virtue of sharing the same metabolism. 

Additionally, playing with colours, shapes and details can make for a really interesting creature. Don’t be afraid to go a little wild when making hybrid creatures, especially if you, like me - don’t mind the design getting a little weird and different. 

- Mod wackart ( ko-fi )

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