Animal Study: Lion and Horse

As I’ve mentioned before, I want to take inspiration and use real life animals to help guide me when creating my own creatures. The Earth is full of amazing and unusual creatures as it is, and would be impossible to do a thorough study of each group. Therefore, I’ve taken one predator and one herbivore to study in, to try and understand their shape and structure and the reasons for it.  

The following mood board shows lionesses and S shapes that I’ve drawn around them. The reason I’ve chosen only lionesses is because it is easier to see their body than male lions that have thick manes. During relaxed positions you can see a deep S shape in the spine and as they change to hunting/prowling, this S shape gets tighter and deeper, turning them almost into a spring ready to pounce. As they sprint the S shapes stretches out and curves back in and repeats, giving them energy and momentum to keep running at high speeds.  

The colour of their fur is the perfect shade to the dry grass that they hide in; even their eyes are a similar golden colour. The colour and patterns of animals is very important to their survival, even the lion’s favorite prey, the Zebra are covered in black and white stripes, which at first you might think is a very bad colour scheme for the hot and dry lands of Africa. However, lions can only see in black and white and when a herd of Zebra’s are running the stripes blending together confuses them and they cannot pick out a single one.  

Here are further studies I’ve done of the lion, first is their skeleton, muscles and then both skeleton and muscles together. I’ve learnt a lot by doing this, I’m learning how they move and where their power comes from. As you can see in the second drawing showing the lions muscles, there are a lot of huge muscles toward the front of the body, at first I thought there would be more in the hide legs to help propel them forwards. But when you see lions chase down their prey, they latch themselves onto their back and drag them down with their weight and strength. Therefore it makes more sense to have bigger muscles towards the front as a lot of the lions prey are bigger than they are so they need strong heavy muscles to bring them down where they then work as a team to kill.    

This information will help me when creating predatory animals who hunt and move like this, knowing more on how their skeleton and muscles work will help improve the overall design and help me create a realistic creatures. 

Here is a mood board of different breeds of horses. Horses are prey creatures that humans have domesticated over thousands of years and most breeds today have been breed for a certain purpose for man such as pulling heavy carts etc. Much like the mood board for the lions, this one shows the shapes of horses, showing where their power comes from, the beautiful shapes and figures horses have and how extremely powerful their hind muscles are making it possible for them to almost stand vertical. In many cultures horses have been praised for their graceful yet powerful movement, a common praise saying that a horse is poetry in motion.

As you can see I’ve created a similar set of drawings to the lion, one image showing the horse’s skeleton, one showing their muscle structure and the last image showing both together. The horse overall has a huge amount of muscles throughout its body, there is a lot focused towards the hind legs, where they use them to push and propel its whole body forward as well as being able to use as defense by kicking and bucking predators from behind with their powerful legs. The rib cage is tightly compact towards the front of the body where most of its organs in the first half of the creature, which leaves a third of it being mostly muscle. There are more huge muscles flowing through its neck and shoulders, adding more defense from using its strong neck for head butting and biting. Overall, the horse is a huge powerhouse that can cause serious damage with just one kick.  

The horse’s skeleton structure aides in humans domesticating it in terms of them riding it. As you can see there is a long gap from the front teeth to the back molars, this is where the bit of the bridle sits that puts pressure on either the roof of the mouth or the tongue. Sometimes when horses are being cheeky, they will throw their head back and bite the bit with their back teeth, making the rider have no control. Some bridles can also put pressure onto the poll, which is a pressure point between the horse’s ears, making their head lower and onto the bit.   

It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when I see fantasy pictures of people riding a creature that looks like a giant tiger, unless they’ve pulled half its teeth out to actually fit a bridle on, it still wont work as a big cats behavior is very independent, they just do what they want. Whereas a horse is always looking to the rider for guidance and support, this behavior is perfect as they are willing to listen and learn and work together with humans creating a special bond.

Overall, this knowledge will help guide me to creating practical, realistic creatures. Whenever I create a silhouette or a creature that resembles something here on earth, I will learn more about it’s skeleton and muscle structure in order to make a more movable and livable being.

References to the images used are saved in a separate word document.