(Scraps folder)

I don't normally post commission WIP's in scraps, preferring to give the commissioner exclusive status updates via my Mediafire account. I guess it's because I think it's a bit silly having folks faving unfinished work (and then seemingly failing to notice the completed version).

But in this case I'll make an exception, because it's almost educational :). The objective was simply to ink and color this commission pic done by another artist for  koopacooper. Due to events that'll remain unspecified, the image had to be halted at the rough stage. In the course of readying the pic to be traced into a vector image (it's going to be superimposed on a kitchen backdrop), I saw a number of anatomical shortcomings that I couldn't let go, even though I too, had little experience with quadrupedal characters.

Fortunately, I had purchased a copy of ImagineFX Presents: Anatomy, which among other things had a whole section on animal anatomy that included horses. A couple of hours of study and sketching, and I was able to superimpose proper equine legs onto a print of the partially-completed pic, as shown above. I learned that the position of a horse's (or pega-taur, in the case of Windrunner here) legs is affected by bones within the main body mass whose positions aren't even visible. For example, the raised front leg, which I was completely fine with until I drew in the bone masses and saw that it's intersection with the body had to be lowered. Other aspects of a horse's skeleton revealed where I needed to modify the character's legs, in one case the corrected version is pointed in the complete opposite direction O_o. Other changes include the position of the rump, which in turn led to the tail needing to be lowered in order to line up with the spine.

Before adding in the other shapes defining the outer edges of the legs, I had to work out just how a horse in the process of slipping out of control might look--by animating it in my head till I got something close to the original pic. I don't actually know if a horse can turn it's rear leg so the hoof is pointed out at a 45 degree angle to its body, so I chose to make that aspect of the rear legs less obvious.

What happens next? I thought the sketch provided needed to be enlarged. Rather than attempt to ink and color the purple sketch, I chose to ink it digitally in Inkscape. Turning the image into a vector pic allows me to export the lineart at any size without the blockiness inherent in up-scaling raster images above their original resolution. Then, I'll superimpose this pic on a separate layer and trace the new legs onto the inkwork already done, finalizing the corrections

Hope you find this info useful. I sure did. Maybe it'll help when I eventually draw (coughponies) :D
Original artwork by footpaw-fetish