Minotaur Monk

[Lisac Pisac]

Hey, I'm trying to sprite a 64x64 "minotaur monk" of sorts in a cross-legged sitting pose. But I'm having a lot of trouble with the shading and the presentation of the legs, among other things.

[dpixel]

I'm not sure if that's possible with backwards knees.. 

Maybe something like this:

[aamatniekss]

Ok, im not the best at this, but I decided to atleast give some pointers. First of all the body is very disproportionate, the hands are way too short, the stomach is area is too long, and the head seems too small.  The leg position you got there is also not cross-legged, but more like just sitting on the floor and soles touching each other. I think you should work from reference, that way it would be easier to convey the right forms and position. You can also find tons of references to how the legs look in a cross legged position. You should definitely check those out.

Anyways, you should try making the arms longer, the body a bit shorter, and the head larger like in this little edit I made. I didn't change much just the main things that bothered me. It's not very good, but should atleast give you some pointers on how to continue. As for the colours and lightning you'd have to wait for some more experienced artists to help with those as they could probably do it better than me.

[Gil]

I'm not sure if that's possible with backwards knees.. 

There's no animals with "backwards knees". It's just that their ankles are higher up. Basically, due to a quirk of human evolution, we ended with derpy feet that use weird bone growths called heels and ankles that sit right above those. It's a very inefficient system really.

[Parkerbaby]

I wouldn't say it's a quirk of human evolution. Plantigrade anatomy has benefits such as maximum stability, which is useful when walking upright being as massive as humans are. And it's also featured in many mammals including bears and raccoons.



Also, assuming this creature evolved to be bipedal rather than magically becoming bipedal (though even if it were to magically, anatomical changes would have had to be made on the fly such as spine curvature and foramen magnum position), it would have likely been subject to similar selection pressures as the early Hominids and thus would have developed similar plantigrade feet rather than extended 'feet' with high ankles/backward knees--barring the impossibility of this evolving due to historical constraints, the specific specialization of the hoof, but in that case, certainly bipedalism couldn't have evolved in the first place.

[Gil]

You're absolutely correct that it's not just in humans, but that doesn't change the fact that I still go "oh come on, what the hell?" every time I look at human feet. There has to be a more efficient design, it's just that it won't get selected for, because it has to evolve out of current setups. Bird feet are much better and support a lot of weight too (look at bipedal dinosaurs), but then you have the problem that arms become less useful as the setup requires most of the mass to be above the feet.