Illustration time lapse & Anatomical Inspiration
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Oct 04, 2024 at 10:20:54 AM
Hey all, don't worry I won't be spamming you with messages. I'll be posting some more works in progress and other time lapse images so you can get a sense for how the research and art come together to create a realistic dragon!
The dragon's anatomy is particularly challenging because they are vertebrates with both forelimbs and functional wings, sounds simple enough but the anatomy exists nowhere in the natural world!
In the book you'll see many dragon skeletons, but here's a classic one to get you started. At first, it's difficult to imagine a realistic set of biomechanics for this anatomy, a way to prevent a flap of the wing from pulverizing the ribcage or interfering with the motions of the forelimbs. So, we turn to nature for inspiration!
Instead of inventing new anatomical structures we can combine existing ones! Evolution has done the difficult work for us. Here you can see color coded examples of each region of the chest's skeletal anatomy.
Both modern birds and therapod dinosaurs have a similar shaped breastbone, and that's the perfect point of contact between the two anatomies.
The elongated structure coming off of the t-rex's breastbone is actually the scapula!
As for the bird, the thick bone vertically emerging from the keel is called the corracoid, and gives us some nice distance from the ribs and keel (breastbone) for the wings to function.
Finally the wing itself is classic dragon, which is to say BAT!! Its elongated fingerbones connected with a membrane of skin may seem fantastical, but it's just one more amazing piece of real biology!
Can't wait to share more biology and process pieces with everyone as we go!