Each skull is divided simply into 3 parts; red - the maxilla and the plains of the 'face'; green - the mandible; blue - the cranial vault; yellow - the Axis (1st cervical vertebra). Each represents to a rough scale the respective size of each skull element in a) human, b) canine and c) equine. Note the cranial vault does not directly represent respective brain size.
I've started with a thought on the sentient issues of anthro' characters. We would expect our characters to the be the singing, dancing types of the average human. So if we take the casual assumption that to have the same level of intelligence means having the same brain size of a human we soon need to adjust the proportions of the skull to accommodate this. Fig 2 indicates a size of the cranial vault in blue of a human (a) that we'd need to apply to our animal skulls. How then do we balance this with the large jaw and jaw muscles of a herbivore or carnivore? What changes does a larger cranium make to that of the facial plains, particularly the Zygomatric (or cheek bones), the position of the eyes and visual field? We have a number of considerations to make and plenty of permutations dependent on species...
This was one of the first things I thought about too, I am glad it is one of the topics you are covering. originally I thought to just lower the bottom of the cranial vault thus extending the brain down, the problems I came up with due to this method was the restriction of the viscera leaving the oral cavity/going down the neck.
ReplyDeleteHowever I now am looking at the empty spaces withing the feral horse skull i.e. the sinuses and guttural pouch and the possibility of utilising them to allow rearrangements of the vault to accommodate the brain. I excitedly anticipate your method and working out of the final shape of the different species :)