Anatomy perspectives on anthropomorphic creature design
Tuesday 14 January 2014
Wings and tails
Wings and tails are the anatomical aspects I really wanted to tackle when I set up this blog. I'll make them more of a focus this year. All too often they are just added as after thoughts rather than being physically useful!
Aesthetics tails and wings that really don't do much!
Wings on a bipedal creature the size of a human or larger has always been a sore subject for me. Ive attempted to design characters *back when I was drawing* with functional anatomically correct wings. And in practice, its impossible to create a human like creature with 6 limbs that has the proper musculature and skeletal build to hoist itself aloft with its own wings. I mean, you can create them, but to be accurate they would look rather freaky. The wingspan alone makes it a cumbersome creature on land. For something in the 200lb range, you need a wingspan the size of a hang glider to keep it aloft. The wings would have to be placed near the fulcrum of the torso for the ever popular superman style of flight to even work. When they are placed on the shoulder blades, it would make it impossible to keep your body in the prone position during flight. Thats like affixing a rope around your chest, and hanging from the rafters. Now try to get into a prone position. Its impossible. Not to mention the muscles and energy required to even flap those enormous wings. All be it beautiful to look at, its just an anatomical improbability.
I very much agree that a winged biped is an anatomical improbability. We would no doubt have to shed most of the weight from our legs, lengthen out necks so we can see whilst flying and if arms were still a must, they'd have to be withered, limited limbs of dubious positioning. We might as well just draw a bird :) But for those mythical creatures we love so much like dragons I suppose the flight question is still relevant. Other than putting it down to magic, reptiles you could say are born to fly :)
I have to say it does annoy me when tails are drawn seemingly coming out halfway down their butt!
ReplyDeleteWings on a bipedal creature the size of a human or larger has always been a sore subject for me. Ive attempted to design characters *back when I was drawing* with functional anatomically correct wings. And in practice, its impossible to create a human like creature with 6 limbs that has the proper musculature and skeletal build to hoist itself aloft with its own wings. I mean, you can create them, but to be accurate they would look rather freaky. The wingspan alone makes it a cumbersome creature on land. For something in the 200lb range, you need a wingspan the size of a hang glider to keep it aloft. The wings would have to be placed near the fulcrum of the torso for the ever popular superman style of flight to even work. When they are placed on the shoulder blades, it would make it impossible to keep your body in the prone position during flight. Thats like affixing a rope around your chest, and hanging from the rafters. Now try to get into a prone position. Its impossible. Not to mention the muscles and energy required to even flap those enormous wings.
ReplyDeleteAll be it beautiful to look at, its just an anatomical improbability.
I very much agree that a winged biped is an anatomical improbability. We would no doubt have to shed most of the weight from our legs, lengthen out necks so we can see whilst flying and if arms were still a must, they'd have to be withered, limited limbs of dubious positioning. We might as well just draw a bird :) But for those mythical creatures we love so much like dragons I suppose the flight question is still relevant. Other than putting it down to magic, reptiles you could say are born to fly :)
Delete