#rtts centaurs

[jayrockin]

I'm a little curious, how much of Talita's (or centaurs' in general) head and neck is fluff?

Just looking how deep into the fuzz her eyeglass strap sinks when she wears them kinda reminds me of owls, and it got me wondering.

(I remember seeing baby great gray owls at a zoo once. They were at the stage where the facial feather disc had already mostly grown in, but the rest of the head was still sparce baby fluff, and it made them look like they were missing the entire head behind the face. I'm kinda imagining a similar effect.)

Yeah, the back of a centaur's head is mostly air.

The long mane feathers mask the effect but the only significant organ back there is the vocal lungs, which can puff out the back of the neck even further. Centaurs visibly inhale into their neck before speaking (the effect is especially dramatic before shouting). Inflation is driven by the contraction of a muscle that connects a cartilaginous "diaphragm" to the rear crest of the skull. This lifts the diaphragm perpendicular to the neck and draws air into the lungs. I animated centaur respiration three years ago but the design of the vocal lungs has changed a little since then.... though the lungs still connect to massive sinuses behind the eyes.

Talita's glasses have a strap that sits between the notch created by the back of her skull and the vocal lung diagram. They also have some rubber grippy bands sewn into to keep it from sliding up her mane feathers. It works well enough.

[egg-on-a-legg]

more of these two, who continue to be soooo fun to draw

[charseraph]

[toad-in-a-trenchcoat]

some of my favorite creatures

characters belong to @jayrockin @charseraph and @iguanodont

[monstertsunami]

its! centaurs!

@jayrockin

[input-command]

Centaur looking to fit in with bipeds? Have I got a solution for you!

[styllwaters]

Quick Talita warm up doodle! Love how she looks in green 🤌

Character belongs to @jayrockin

[drawingsphopho]

Talita has a terrible dream

characters by @jayrockin

[tickfleato]

mysterious centaurs that definitely arent based on any anime characters. either that or it’s the crossover you’ve always dreamed of??

meryl looks small but shes literally talita sized...

[pebbal]

Centaur autism

Centautism

I’m obsessed with them actually

[cathchicken]

I lied there’s more

@charseraph sorry,, today I had the unfathomable urge to draw your characters. I cannot explain it… good shapes!!!

[jayrockin]

How did the centaur’s earliest ancestors keep their brain from being part of the head? Cephalization seems pretty common in bilaterally symmetric organisms, and a separate sensory processing center seems unlikely to me

Diegetic answer: Centaurs' recent ancestors were very potato shaped and when they crawled out of the dirt, and when they elongated there was a giraffe laryngeal nerve situation where the order of development of the bones and spinal cord prevented the brain from developing further up the body, over time the sensory ganglion has been getting beefier to compensate and in several million years would likely become the primary central nervous system. This is already apparent in some other clades of centaur planet "vertebrates"

Non-diegetic answer: It's a anatomy decision I made on a whim a decade ago that I probably wouldn't repeat now, but it's way too deeply entrenched in the rest of the design to get rid of now. So I'm having fun with the knock-on effects in the meantime, like grievous head wounds being survivable.

[egg-on-a-legg]

i'm a huge fan of @jayrockin's runaway to the stars universe, and i figured it was about time to make my own ocs!!

these two are roommates at a jovian university. the centaur is aul-waral (he/they), a homeplanet centaur who took a keen interest in human literature, and is currently majoring in jovian lit. the avian is ipsauwitt (she/he), a polar avian raised offplanet by his brightparent and dunparent, who chooses to reject a lot of avian cultural norms. she's majoring in structural engineering.

the best term i can think of to describe these two is life partners? sometimes their relationship is romantic, sometimes it isnt, but theyre sticking together through it all.

[charseraph]

Shy Walau, a centaur

[wind-tied]

ocs

[monstertsunami]

artfight attack for archiedragon !