I Do Love Anatomy

I am in the process of figuring out how to illustrate the ecstatic body postures, rune stances and martial arts movements that are integrated into my World Tree Cards. Throughout time, these positions have been illustrated with considerable artistic license. Meaning abstract lines and 3-d figurines have constraints of their own that really aren’t relevant to how we move our bodies.

I have been looking for solutions and I finally came across Kineman’s Moveable 3D Skeleton program. And it is great. I mean, really really great. Take a look:

Perhaps the most famous example of the struggle artists have representing reality is the DaVinci horse sculpture that was commissioned in 1482 but was not actually cast until 1999. There was social turmoil that interfered with DaVinci’s problem solving in the 1500’s, but the fundamental problem he faced was how to keep the sculpture looking like a horse while making sure that the legs were capable of holding up the mass of the body and balancing the head and neck.

Of course, my next unmet desire is a similar program for horse skeletons. I know one is out there as the PBS two part program on the Story of the Horse includes a segment that animates a fossil Eohippus skeleton. Of course, it took them about a year to put the few seconds of the animation together.

But now that its been done once, I want a version for myself! Especially if I could vary the angles of the bones of the pelvis and show how those changes affect the hip and shoulder joints. And that in turn would show how a horse’s conformation affects how they move and what we can ask of them under saddle (or in harness) without causing them damage.

There is so much absolute baloney about how horses move still being propagated in the form of training that is SO terribly much to the horses detriment. A program that illustrates the range (and limits) of each joint and how they interact in the whole would be a godsend.

So I dream on…