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Gwennafran — Centaur Don'ts Tutorial
Published: 2017-07-12 18:53:42 +0000 UTC; Views: 13019; Favourites: 176; Downloads: 71
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A tutorial on common errors that should be avoided when drawing centaurs. This is on Tumblr here .Large file warning.
Essentially, I've seen a lot of centaur art repeating the same anatomy errors on the horse part, humanising (or flat out breaking) various parts of the horse anatomy. This is fine if you're going for something disturbing or creepy, but otherwise these are errors to be avoided.
I've seen all of these done several times. Seriously, this is not targeting a specific person's art. Sometimes it's just easier to understand what not to do when given visual examples.
There's obviously lots of other things that can be done wrong anatomy-wise. But I think this counts as the most common errors, done by artists that actually knows how to draw humans, but tend to fall a little short on the human/horse combination.
This is ignoring the general SNAFU that is human-to-centaur transformation art/stories. That genre has a whole bunch of irrational (learn basic anatomy, dammit) nonsense specifically tied to it, that would be it's whole own tutorial should I go into it.
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Comments: 33
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I see a LOT of mistakes regarding that very last one!
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An interesting file, even for those of us who are not artists
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The baby centaur example reminds me of a film from Winsor McCay featuring a centaur foal , though his is remarkably disproportionate.
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Hahaha! I actually didn't know that film existed. Remarkable how spooky the foal/baby combination can get.
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Indeed!
I need that "Thank You" at the end as a reaction image.
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The most common error I see, apart from leg anatomy, is making the proportions of the human and horse halves wrong. I.E., the human half is sometimes far too large or the horse body far too small, making the creature look ridiculously top heavy. This goes for musculature as well, not just scale. Alternatively, though much more rare, the horse half is sometimes ridiculously large (let's say, Draft or Clydesdale size), with a thin, frail looking human half. It's always a little unsettling when I see errors like that, it takes away from what the artist is trying to achieve.
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My personal guidelines are to have the human torso about the same height as the horse body. As I just find that t be aesthetically pleasing. Because, yeah. That can be a problem as well. And I hear you on "body types", and how they should fit together. That's pretty advanced on my list of anatomy problems, though. *glances at joints bending the wrong way* You can only address so many things in one tutorial.
Related, a rather unnerving trope in "human to centaur" fetish transformation tropes seem to be that the non-willing girl transforms into a centaur. And then have her upper body turn "super fit and muscular" to fit the lower horse body. Because as we all know *all* horses are fit, muscular and in good shape, and so being a centaur mean you *must* be so as well. Naturally, her breasts will also grow into giant size, because... Well... Just because. It certainly makes no logical sense for a creature presumably built for a lot of running to have large breasts (I manage a centaur group. And literature by far breaks the no porn group rule (And DA rule) most often. So I read everything submitted to the group to check that there's no porn).
Seriously, though. I think I've yet to see a transformation "human to centaur" picture or story, where the horse body takes shape from the human's original physical fitness. It's always either "preserve status quo with already super model shaped human on nice horse" or "change human physique to fit magically appearing horse body".
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Great and interesting tutorial, I certainly agree that basic knowledge of horse anatomy is essential when drawing centaurs, the structure of joints should be done properly and there are many examples around that look really ridiculous.
But while I love classical human/horse centaurs, I would argue that some measure of humanising centaurs' lower body need not be an outright damnable thing. When I look at centaur pictures, I appreciate especially those that manage to look really natural, by which I mean as a believable being, a one whole that fits together well. I am not that much into some pseudoscientific "explanations" of how centaurs might have biologically evolved and functioned as a real-life species, I prefer to think of centaurs as a mythological/fantasy/magical creatures. But all the same, I really don't like such centaurs that look like upper part of a human and lower part of a horse just accidentally glued together. 
More natural looking centaurs can surely be achieved by many simple means such as matching colours of hair and tail, carefully choosing proportions, matching pose of upper and lower part etc. But another possible way I have seen in some pictures is to draw the centaur as whole in a specifically centauric way that emphasizes that the centaur is one body, one being, and not just assorted body parts borrowed from other species.
Some artists choose equinising (I made up this word, but you know what I mean, making horse-like) the upper body of a centaur, including skin colouring, mane-like hair, horse ears, even facial features. I personally don't like this approach very much (save perhaps for some minor details) as I find centaur characters more relatable when they have mostly human features, but I understand the reason to make the centaurs look more integrated. And analogically to equinising the upper part of centaur's body, humanising the lower part might serve a similar purpose, to show that this is not just a horse that somehow has human torso instead of its head, but another kind of being, that is in many respects much closer to humans than horses. I am not talking about rearranging the anatomy or putting human legs in place of horse legs, but I think altering some of the proportions and curves of horse body you mentioned in the tutorial might be justified when drawing a centaur.
I hope I expressed my thoughts in an understandable way.
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Honestly, I think all artists can justify breaking all the rules they want when making a centaur. Thing is, though, that you basically have to know the rules in order to properly break them.
So hey, not gonna come after people doing things differently than this tutorial suggests. That's really not my intention here. But I'd prefer they do it by choice rather than accident.
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I cannot disagree with that.
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Somewhat I am not sure if a horse is really the right example for the lower body of a centaur. As somebody correctly calculated, a centaur has the option of either choke to death or starve, since horse sized lungs (and body) would require breathing through the mouth. And a horse like diet would likewise require constant chewing (while breathing), with a mouth not suited to breaking down grass and the like. Thus assuming that the "human" half is mostly lungs, and the "horse" part only contains some air sacks (to maximize oxygen/CO2 exchange), and of course heart and all other innards, and assuming centaurs are omnivore (like humans) then their digestive track would shrink at lot; and their "horse" ribcage would consequently also smaller, making smaller lungs more viable.
Also the center of of gravity of a centaur would be different, since typically centaur are drawn cantering forward leaning, further than a typical horse. Thus a little stronger front legs might be justified.
The final question is whether the front legs evolved from a shoulder like structure or a hip like structure. Since centaur are usually drawn with two ribcages, one would expect that indeed shoulder seems the origin. Overall, I would think a realistic centaur should have rather a much "thinner" body than a comparable horse, due to different diet and missing lungs. But then "Baby horse"-like or upwards curved omnivore belly could be justified too.
If one takes into account how the insides of a realistic centaur likely work, then one could also justify quite some deviation to a typical horse shape.
But, if one is taking a horse, then your tutorial nails it down.
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If you have to get truly scientific, centaroid creatures based on earth mammals makes no sense at all.
I usually just accept the classical approach, as that's what defined centaurs as mythological creatures. Or in short. A wizard did it. As this is the mainstream approach, it's also what's focused on here.
- As mentioned in this, people are free to take a different approach if they want to, but it should be by choice rather than by accident/lack of research.
That said, you'd definitively start to get quite a few (extra) problems with the inner skeleton, if you replaced the horse front legs with human legs.
PS. I can't imagine you'd have much fun reading the average human to centaur transformation fics where "it's totally science. I got a pill/injection that can turn you into a centaur in half an hour just by taking it. because... Science works like that!!!". XD
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There was something like your female example at the top in, of all places, The Good Dinosaur movie. Not a centaur, but still a female four-legged character with curvy legs. It was a bit distracting.
And if you’re aiming for the creep factor, you can always go with an original design that didn’t survive past the Greek times, the “human in front, horse in back.” www.theoi.com/image/K15.4Kheir…
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Aww... i can't get the link to work. But not too surprised that this is not a new thing.
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This is very helpful to trying to draw photo-realistic centaurs. I felt like the stomach curve thing was a little bit off to me. I searched some horse pictures and immediately found several that seemed to have sharper angles that what you were showing as correct and were more similar to the incorrect drawing. However, the sharp angle you put at the very end of the rib cage in the incorrect example is not present in an of them, so that's something to avoid.
Biggest thing I'm getting from the RL pictures is that horse anatomy is just as varied as human anatomy. Good job on this guide.
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Honestly, I feel this counts for most stylised cartoon-styled centaurs too. While you can exaggerate horse traits in a cartoony style, they still ought to look like extreme/abstracted horse traits, rather than human traits.
Could you maybe give me a link with an example of stomach curves, so I properly understand where you're coming from? There are horses with a sharper curve, true, but it's never as exaggerated high on the back body as my example. Also, most importantly, I don't think I've ever seen an actual horse curve inward.
This is the main thing to avoid on horse stomachs, really. Predator stomachs often curve inwards (if not full of food). Think greyhounds for a very clear example of an inwards curving stomach . Horses, on the other hand, are herbivores. And herbivore stomachs in general curve outwards. Where predators need to be able to stuff themselves super full the moment they catch prey (meaning they stomachs can widen out considerably), the herbivore approach is to constantly munch on plants. And this shows on general anatomy. It's one of the traits you generally can use to recognise something as being a meat eater.
The moment the stomach curve starts bending inwards, the horse part starts looking wrong to me. Even if it's nowhere near as exaggerated as my example. That does at the same time mean, that you could make a sharper angle on the horse stomach, but still make it look right, as long as it bends outwards.
Horse anatomy is extremely varied, true. The difference between a small pony, an elegant Arabian and a giant work- or warhorse is pretty extreme. The general rules mentioned here still counts for all of them, though. Don't bend the joints the wrong way. Don't turn them into predators. And don't make the legs too humanoid.
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I think I understand what's happening here. You are talking about the actual form of the horse's stomach, which is always convex and never concave unlike a predator. I was looking at the side view profile/outline. Here are some examples where the angle goes upwards somewhat sharply:
media1.britannica.com/eb-media…
cdn.thehorse.com/images/cms/20…
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia…
Basically, what I'm saying is that the stomach/torso looks almost rectangular in the correct view on your tutorial. While this can be correct, it seems like the profile is usually more circular, hence the angle.
As for the rest, yes, varying much more than a small amount from anatomically correct would result is some pretty weird-looking characters. I have seen this a lot too... ugh...
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Yeah, I had a feeling that was it. I guess this is one place where English being my secondary language becomes apparent. I'd have never thought to describe it as convex and concave. X)
And I probably should have exaggerated even more. The problem doing the don't pictures is that all of my instincts was fighting me doing them as I worked on this. I often had to repeatedly go back and exaggerate images more, as it just "felt so bad" while drawing them, but in reality wasn't exaggerated enough to be super clear (it was especially hard for me to make the lower horse legs bulge out in a convex shape).
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To be fair, I had to look up which word was which for convex and concave. I guess a good mnemonic would be conCAVE = CAVEd in and convex is opposite. And to be honest your written English is above average for a native speaker so I didn't notice.
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Aw, thanks. I know my English isn't horrible, every so often I can just feel how it isn't instantly natural to me.
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YES, TO ALL THE ABOVE!!
I hate seeing centaurs drawn badly TT__TT
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Honestly, they get to be amusing, when a clearly otherwise skilled artist makes a very detailed and time consuming piece. With glaring anatomy faults humanising the horse part.
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Haha I can imagine XD I just don't get why people shouldn't want to at least try to do something somewhat more realistic ^^"
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To be fair, better to try and fail, than to not try at all. That's how you learn, really.
I've also seen people start out with tons of problems present at this list, but over relatively short time learn how horse bodies actually work.
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True, I remember my first centaurs being quite crappy , but I see many people not even putting the effort to better themselves :-/
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Not everyone draws with the intent to get better at it, so that doesn't surprise me.
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Thank you for posting this tutorial! I really want to draw Lucian, but I've never drawn a centaur before, so this is really helpful. Thanks.
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Haha, he's not the simplest of OC's, true. Understanding how the leg bones work (and what way which joint will bend) beneath the body really does wonders in general. For me at least it's pretty crucial to get this in order to change poses around.
That said, in Lucian's case, it is possible to conveniently put him into an outfit that hide quite a lot of his actual body.
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