Giraffe Ecorche...
polycounter lvl 13
I'm making an ecorche of a giraffe. It started out as a small study for another piece I'm planning to do, involving a giraffe. Small, because I thought it would be similar to human anatomy, but turns out its not really that similar, so I'm trying to finish it now to better understand it 
I have done a similar thing for a human, there was so much ref for just about every aspect I looked for. With giraffes though? I gotta look at the next best thing - the horse. So I've been using photos on the internet and [ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animal-Anatomy-Artists-Elements-Form/dp/0195142144"]this book[/ame] which conveniently also has one picture of the giraffes muscular system, as well as all the origins and insertions for horses.
The trouble though, is with the form of each bone and muscle. Its largely guesswork from observation at the moment. One thing that I feel is really throwing me off is the shape of the pelvis, so I included a few more pictures of it.
I don't suppose anyone got any crits that can help me out? If not, I'll just use this space to post WIPs
BTW, I will be working on this on and off alongside my freelance work, so could be a slow thread.
I have done a similar thing for a human, there was so much ref for just about every aspect I looked for. With giraffes though? I gotta look at the next best thing - the horse. So I've been using photos on the internet and [ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animal-Anatomy-Artists-Elements-Form/dp/0195142144"]this book[/ame] which conveniently also has one picture of the giraffes muscular system, as well as all the origins and insertions for horses.
The trouble though, is with the form of each bone and muscle. Its largely guesswork from observation at the moment. One thing that I feel is really throwing me off is the shape of the pelvis, so I included a few more pictures of it.
I don't suppose anyone got any crits that can help me out? If not, I'll just use this space to post WIPs
BTW, I will be working on this on and off alongside my freelance work, so could be a slow thread.
Replies
I love your passion. Deciding to keep going just to learn
On a more useful note, I did run across this while verifying that little bit:
Lol, thanks alot, thats really cool
DWalker, yeh thats really interesting. Seems a load of mammals of different sizes have the same amount of cervical vertebrae, but a different amounts of ribs. I just googled it, and even whales have 7..
jfeez, getting in touch sounds like a great idea!
Thanks everyone. Soz, no update yet, gotta go to wedding stuff this week.
I guess it doesn't look like I have got much further, so I have made this update image a bit more interesting. If you cross your eyes and 'align' your double vision, you can see it in 3d!!!11
Just need to do the insertions and origins of the neck and head... thennn I will tweak it all together to make sure the forms are all correct and everything's overlapping correctly... and then I'm done?
does anyone have any pictures of a horse without the brachiocephalicus, in the front view? and also a horse's muscles from below?
So, I'm kinda stuck! I've got a plan to try get the origins and insertions of the same muscles from the human aand try apply it to this... Or I might just put a tube in there as a 'block out form' because I don't think they individually affect the neck that much.
In this update, I've done the back of the neck and tweaked the proportions overall based on a photo.
Learnt so much out of this..