Giraffe Ecorche...

brwnbread

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.

BARDLER

Yea getting good reference for a giraffe is a bitch, as we both know. I couldn't find any detailed pictures or drawings of a giraffe skeleton no matter how hard I looked. The only skeleton pictures I found where from a side view. I wish you the best of luck, and if I stumble upon anything I will let you know.

ScarletShark

brwnbread wrote: »

...so I'm trying to finish it now to better understand it

I love your passion. Deciding to keep going just to learn No crits here, I think you're off to a great start!

DWalker

On a related note, giraffes and gerbils both have the same number of cervical vertebrae - 7.

On a more useful note, I did run across this while verifying that little bit:

jfeez

Wish i could find something useful to help, you could always get in touch with the national history museum like we talked about see if u can get more pictures of this http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17613751 =P cant wait to see more tho, its looking sick already

demilich

this is cool!

brwnbread

ScarletShark wrote: »

I love your passion. Deciding to keep going just to learn No crits here, I think you're off to a great start!

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.

brwnbread

I've done some more around the neck and hind legs. Had a hard time figuring out how the inner thigh looked, until I found some dissection photos of a horse.

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

brwnbread

I did a rough study of the front bit of a normal horse, to practice what I've learnt and identify what I need to learn



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?

brwnbread

So the neck of the giraffe is vastly different from other mammals, in that the muscles that are supposed to be 'deep' are actually superficial... so that book I was using doesn't have the insertions and origins

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.

SoulWind

A great study, not an animal that I see much study of despite being so well known. I hope this grabs the attention of other anatomy enthusiasts, and look forward to seeing how it influences your future design choices.

brwnbread

So I got caught up doing some other things lol... Anyway, managed to figure out enough of the neck to finish this. I just gotta polish and present now. Might do the face muscles after all this is polished



Learnt so much out of this..