GamingGal was interested in seeing some more of the random sketch pages that I do, so here's one featuring her characters, Aaria, Delilah, and Dana. Masochist that I am, I can never be content with just putting together shapes that look right and designing my characters out of building blocks like every other artist. No, I need to make my cartoon characters scientifically accurate, and figure out how their skeletons work, where their muscles attach, and their entire evolutionary history, before I'm satisfied that my goofy animal meets all my standards of quality.

This is kind of obsession with tangential problem-solving is called "nerd-sniping," and furries are prime opportunities for it. Human anatomy and animal anatomy are both fairly well understood by artists and scientists alike (though some artists may have some glaring misconceptions as to *why* the anatomy is the way it is), but anthropomorphic animals present something of a challenge by combining aspects of both; you need to have recognizable animal anatomy, otherwise your furry is just a human in an animal mask, but the proportions and shapes still need to read as human for, uh... purposes. The balance here is flexible, and changes depending on the animal, the body part, and the artist's intention. I've already talked at some length about the difficulties involved with attaching an animal-like tail to a human-like pelvis on this page: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19627247/ and on this page, I've done some similar musing on how to get animal necks into a human-like posture.

Humans have really weird necks, because we walk upright, so our spines attach to the bottoms of our skulls, while most animals have spines that attach to the back. If you're a sensible person, you'll just ignore this little tidbit, because most of the pieces involved aren't even visible in life, but if you are me and your desire for making sense outweighs your capacity for common sense, then this is a problem that begs to be solved. Shifting the contact point of the spinal column down into a more human position requires bending the entire cranium (incidentally enlarging the brain case in the process), shortening the mandible, and getting really creative with the positioning of the first two cervical vertebrae. Because it's important to maintain the general shape of the animal's face, the foramen magnum is still located higher on the skull than it is in a human, about halfway between where a human's and an animal's would be. Although I don't think I actually drew a joint that would be capable of this, that probably allows anthro furries to shift between an animal-like and a human-like head posture relatively easily, as most of the muscle connections on the back of the skull are still intact. The neck itself is more or less an animal neck squashed into a human-like posture, with the first two vertebrae (which are quite different from those of a human) doing... something. I have yet to do any rigorous work figuring out how the torso works, but I'm assuming it's more or less like that of a human, because the primary purpose of the torso's musculature is to support the arms, and those need to be able to do human things.

Since we have two big cats here, it's fun to muse on what makes each of these closely-related species unique, and contrast them against each other. Lions have rather long skulls compared to other felids, and I give Aaria a particularly long muzzle because I feel that the longer face is better suited to the kinds of sly expressions she's likely to make. Of course, for all my obsession with accuracy, working in 2D allows me to cheat a little, and draw faces that might not technically be possible in real life, for the purpose of expressiveness, though I try to build my expressions out of the real anatomy wherever possible. Speaking of cheating, cheetahs have incredibly short muzzles, even by felid standards, and rather small heads, which is probably a weight-saving adaptation. This gives Delilah, who seems to present herself as a "soft butch," a bit of a babyface, and makes her particularly adorable. I want to hug her. I want to smooch her.

After all that, Dana was refreshingly easy to draw. I think the only reason I didn't draw more of her was because I was very tired by that point and couldn't really think of anything to draw her doing, but I'm sure I'll have other opportunities. No confusing anatomy, no complicated hair, just an elongated cone, sultry eyes, and an... incredibly dexterous tongue... oh dear...

Oh and Godzilla is also there.