so animal legs what are some funky things that i've seen with animal legs i'll go from the
perspective of animal legs on people if we're drawing them straight on a dog i'll go for like
dogs first just because like what kind of dog am i doing i don't want to do it with
corgi corgis are a little small so we have a dog i see some people just whoo
the straight up and down what's the dog doing but yeah this is one thing that i see is the
straight up and down no joints don't do this so no leg bend unrealistic on people and animals
no bend is something i see more often than you think another thing that i see sometimes
is like if we got a choker i draw a chunky dog i'm trying to think of a chunky dog like a chow
and then i see dogs like this and then like legs are like this
oh this kills me disproportionate legs, legs should match the body they're attached to
so these are just general those are the legs on on an animal let's do for legs on so on people
there's some stuff that i've seen if we're starting with just general animal legs
where it's just the person likes and then pause so this is technically not incorrect really it
doesn't take proportion of the initial anatomy slash weighting into account we'll talk about why
i find this incorrect because what this does is it actually removes a joint it takes away a joint
that should be there legs in general will have three like primary quote-on-quote joints within
them and while this is not technically incorrect it doesn't take the initial proportion so it does
feel more incorrect than like what most people tend to do when we're drawing a person's leg we
are something called plantigrades right we are plantar grades so i'll show you what that means
so if we take our legs so that's the thigh and then the calf and then our heel and then our toes
four sections three quote-on-quote joints so this is plantigrade so our heel and our toe
are on the ground right so plantigrade feet are what we have other mammal legs like dogs cats
birds are digitigrade that's what these legs are called so this is digitigrade so only toe is on
the ground that's why this one is technically incorrect because by drawing it with just
these two and then the paws we're removing our heel we're removing a joint that's in there so
you're basically just completely removing it that's why it is incorrect in a more scientific
anatomical way right so when we draw all of our animal legs our digitigrade legs are what we
have for dogs and cats and birds most birds kangaroos are actually plantigrade because
kangaroo legs are like you have the big haunches and then you have this back here and then it's
big feet sit like that that's like a kangaroo like so kangaroos are actually also plantigrade if
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so digitigrade i've drawn those are sort of cat legs so if i were to translate that into bird legs
the thing with birds is that their legs are very very thin right if i was to translate bird legs
onto a person right i'd probably keep the thighs the same and slowly i'd thin out the legs a lot so
the calves and the ankle would thin out a lot and then the heel would be really really thin
again this is very fantasy there's like there's really no scientific way to do this properly
because birds have hollow bones so they're a lot lighter than people are so their legs can probably
hold up this amount of weight that's how they can fly as well right so i would thin out these
legs a lot but then i would make sure that the feet are really large so then you have a larger
base to hold the body on right so if you kind of think of it as like a lamp you know the lamp
bottom has like a really really wide base but it's like really really thin on top but that wide base
makes sure that the height can be held on the bottom so i would need to make sure that my
the talons are really really wide to account for the fact that the legs are very very thin often
when i draw the animal legs i just change the ratio of torso to legs just to make it easier
on me when i was younger i would do that i would shorten the thighs and then kind of move up where
the knee would be and then shift where the heel would be as i've gotten older and done it more i
think i've just made the legs longer like i've changed the ratio so it'd be like it would be
closer to like one-third torso two-thirds leg but yes that is one way to do it is if you shorten
and change the ratio of the parts of the leg instead it's just a bit awkward to look at at
first you get used to it but it happens so bird legs are thin and i have a wide base to feed for
to account for the weight how long should it be i either change the torso to leg
ratio or shift joints to account for new lengths right so it really just does depend on what you
want to do i tend to switch between those two but depends on what you're feeling this kind of deal
is the same thing with why based feet to account for weight is the same deal with dogs and cats
i tend to break that rule though so if i am drawing like i have a fox character so when i'm
drawing the fox feet i don't tend to make the paws very very large i tend to keep him very very thin
so it does look like he's walking on needles all the time which is like not really realistic but i
tend to not care on that regard because i want him to have that really thin frame rather than like
have the more powerful looking haunches because i want to keep that thinness with the character
so again all of these rules you can keep them at your own discretion there are stuff that like
you know will help the character feel more realistic it'll help them feel a bit more
grounded but again you can take more stylistic ideas if you liked what you saw be sure to hit
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