Anatomy Studies

For my project, I want to create realistic anatomy for all of my creatures. Anatomy that allows them to move the way they should, and anatomy that helps them survive the world they live in.

For the creature I'm working on now, I have silhouettes of Earth animals that resemble it. The figure on the left shows an American Bison, African Buffalo and an African Wildebeest. By studying the anatomy of these animals, I will be able to make informed anatomy for my creatures. Between these silhouettes, I think that the African Buffalo and African Wildebeest resemble my creature the most in terms of body shape. The Bison it a bit too large and thick, making it not as flexible as my own creature design does.
I will try to look into all three of these creatures to help educate myself on animal anatomy further.    

To the right is a drawing of a Wildebeest skull. From trying to research into wildebeests and their anatomy, there is very little studies on them at all. When searching for wildebeest anatomy, many images and articles came up on live ones, or dead ones being pulled apart, but barely anything written or illustrated that would be useful for me.
The skull is a valuable find, as I think my creature has a very similar face to this animal.  





Moving onto the American Bison, there are surprisingly, images and references to their anatomy. From my research however, only their skeleton but thats a lot better than one skull!
The Bison's skeleton has a lot of weight to carry, this is why I'm interested in looking at its anatomy to see what aspects of its design I can take to help my creature cope with the weight of its horn. This animal holds it head very vertical, unlike other animals, holding them almost with their nose in the air. This could be because it has restricted movements because of its weight or it just finds it more comfortable.  











An unexpected turn, but an Ox had plenty of references images for me to study. An Ox also is quite top heavy which still makes it appropriate for me to study for my creature.
This Ox can hold its head up higher than the Bison, it has more freedom of movement. Its skeleton however, is slanted downward towards its front legs, which is something that I do not want to incorpriate into my creatures as they need to be a bit more agile than an ox, still a heavy moving creature but must be able to move its front legs freely.

An Ox also has plenty of muscle images for me to study which as of now I couldn't find anything appropriate enough for my creature. Studying these muscles will help me create a muscle structure for my own creature, it wont be exactly the same, however it'll help me build up my creature from the skeleton up.

Overall, I have learned a lot from doing these studies and I feel a lot more confident in further developing my creature. I intend to do this process of studying real life animals to help inform my creature designs.