Introduction

Welcome back to another tip of the month! I’m Hecate, and I’m happy to be sharing my knowledge from over 5 years of using Clip Studio Paint.

 

Today I’ll be exploring animal-human hybrids. These are creatures that have a combination of human and animal characteristics, which makes the category very broad. If you’re a character artist like me, you may also get urges to expand your designs and artistic capability. You may have seen human-animal hybrids and thought “woah, that looks really cool. I wonder if I could draw something like that…” They are everywhere, from Disney characters to Egyptian Gods to furries.

 

But if you’ve drawn humans for most of your art career, drawing animals, or even animal human hybrids, seems daunting. You might take a step back and not know where to start. I once experienced this feeling, but I’m here to push you forward, because drawing animals isn’t as hard as you think!

 

 

Just starting is the most difficult part, but I hope to help character artists who want to delve into more possibilities. As I mentioned before, there’s a huge variety in hybrid animal characters, so I’ll be teaching you through the types I have most experience drawing: mythical creatures, and Kemonomimi (humans with some animal features.)

 

Enjoy!

Studying

Animal Anatomy

In order to draw an animal hybrid, we first have to know how to draw animals. I have a very skilled artist friend who draws animals and hybrids all the time, and I asked for any pointers that they have. I received this pearl of advice: “They’re all humans but weird.” What this means is that animals have unique anatomy to fulfill different functions than humans, but the basic structure of their bodies is still the same.

This is true especially for mammals and birds, although resemblance declines with animals further away in the animal kingdom. In each example you can see the ribcage, pelvis, and spine are all connected in similar ways.

Combining anatomy

This basic similar structure also allows us to combine the human and animal features in the most ‘natural’ looking way possible. If an animal has a certain feature, you can find what the equivalent area is on the human body. For example, goat legs are something that humans definitely don’t have, but we do have legs that connect to our pelvises. Therefore we can connect goat legs to the pelvis and make a Satyr.

Use reference photos!

If you’re an artist just learning animals and hybrids, I can’t stress how crucial it is to use animal reference photos. My insistence of this becomes much more understandable when you can see an actual example of why.

 

So here, for you all, I drew a centaur without and with using a reference for a horse.

While drawing the first one, I didn’t even think it was turning out that badly… But yes, references are helpful.  Using references isn’t ‘cheating’ as a few might think, it’s just another form of practice, a very good one, since you get familiar with the form and structure of whatever you’re drawing.

Animal features

Specific features are very important. These include ears, tails, horns, wings, hooves and more. They make the animal look distinctly recognizable. It’s also helpful for drawing Kemonomimi, which we’ll explore soon.

Ears: Different shapes change a little depending on the animal, but exact same function for all animals. For most birds, ears are holes in the side of the head.

Tails: These can look very different, but all are extensions of the spine and are used for balance and movement, and also communication.

Horns: They can come in a variety of shapes, used for fighting and defense.

Wings: Wings are connected to the shoulder blades. These are my favorite to draw. Their structure can be compared to human arms and hands. But with the feathers that cover them, it can be divided into 4 main sections. The 2 main types of feathers are primary flight feathers, with a triangle shaped end, and secondary flight feathers, with a rounded end.

Texture: Something that can scare character artists is all of the different textures animals have, I know it did for me. They can have fur, feathers, scales, and more. Drawing so much repetition can get tiring. Again, using references for these is helpful. For fast results, however, Clip Studio offers assets for your ease. In Clip Studio Paint assets, you can find and test out almost any texture brush you can think of. Anyone can upload their own brushes, which makes for a very vast and diverse selection.

 

I provided below a couple of my favorite free brushes, check them out if you’re interested!

Application of What We Learned

Mythical Creatures

There’s countless animal-human hybrids from the mythologies of cultures across the world, which allows for a wide array of creatures you can choose to draw. The tips I mentioned before will hopefully make each creature less difficult-seeming to draw. This merman is pretty simple, since his body from the waist down just turns into a fish.

Just determine which parts of creature are human and which are animal. Sometimes a mythical creature has parts from 2 or more animals, like this Sphinx.

Mythical creatures aren’t carved in stone (unless it’s one of Medusa’s victims), so you can have fun with different interpretations. For example, I found drawing of the Sphinx with a lion lower half but the upper half of a woman, including arms, like a lion centaur! As artists we always have creative freedom.

 

Keep in mind the theme or feeling you want your creature to have, since many mythological beasts come from stories with meanings attached. I drew this Lamia, a Greek snake-woman monster, with a very creepy aura. Their lore portrays them as murderers that hunt and kill adults and children.

Kemonomimi

Next, I’ll explain a hybrid that has much less ‘animal’ in it: Kemonomimi. In Japanese it means ‘beast/animal ears.’ Famous examples of these are catgirls, foxgirls, and wolfboys, but there’s almost endless possibilities! Let’s break down the process of drawing them.

An important concept to learn is how to combine human and animal features based on the results you want. There’s two main ways: based on functionality and based on aesthetics. Drawing animal features on humans with functionality is trying to get the features as accurate as they could be if these hybrid creatures existed in real life. Drawing them based on aesthetics means it doesn’t matter if the designs ‘work’ as long as they’re cute or appealing!

Combination based on functionality

As you know, human ears are on the side of our head since that is where our ear canals are. A functionality-based hybrid would have animal ears around that area, not on the top of their head. Their tail would be proportional to their body, and humans are quite tall relative to animals so the tail would be long to balance the human properly. The color palette is within the normal color range for that animal.

 

These are popular for DnD characters and for characters in original stories.

Combination based on aesthetics

Secondly there’s combining based on aesthetics/appearance. This is more commonly what we see in video games and anime. A good food-for-thought is: if you put cat ears on top of the head, should they have human ears too or not? It’s up to you! Personally, I like drawing them with hair obscuring that area so it’s unclear and the viewer can just decide for themself. A tail that isn’t proportional is also the most common. Fangs are commonly drawn so the top canines are closer inside, even though this isn’t anatomically correct. You’re also free to use any color, as bright or unrealistic as it is. You can go as crazy with the design as you’d like.

 

These are popular for anime and video game characters.

You can see that for any of the animal aspects, you can have your own style and interpretations. There’s no ‘animal hybrid police’ that will arrest you for drawing something differently. Now some of you might be asking, if you can do whatever you want for these characters, why learn and study so much about the proper structure and functions? That’s when I can reply with a quote I really like, learn the rules before you break them.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with a process on how to draw your own animal hybrid!

Make Your Own!

I’ll provide an example for each step of this process for one of my own drawings.

1. Choose the animal/ animals

I had remembered a drawing I had done in 6th grade, a cow girl, that I decided to redraw. Not the Texas western kind of cowgirl, but well… you’ll see.

2. Choose what parts you want to transfer

I decided I wanted her to have cow ears and horns, cow legs, and a cow tail. I also wanted to incorporate the spots cows have, so I realized vitiligo would be the perfect way to represent this on a human.

3. What should the human look like to best fit the animal or your theme?

I decided that I wanted a brown cow, so the human would have brown skin and darker brown hair. Cows have really big, black eyes and pretty eyelashes so she does too. Cows are hefty, strong creatures so she isn’t thin. She’ll be dressed in farmers or outdoors clothing.

4. Doing the drawing

First, I made sure to use a big enough canvas for details and a simple background. I usually put the smallest side at 1200 pixels or more.

Sketch

I took some inspiration from my old sketch, although parts of it were… weird? I just don’t get why I gave her hooves for hands. She is walking on two feet why would she need them! I also, of course, looked up photos of cows as other references.

 

I paid close attention to the anatomy of her cow legs and ears.

Lineart and flat color

I started with a sketch and had my reference photos close. After I did the lineart, I used a flat gray fill inside of all the lineart. Then, I clipped layers on top for the coloring. This technique helps when the lineart has small open gaps that the magic wand tool will go through and makes it hard to select the parts you want.

Shading and details

First, I put every layer for the character in one folder, including the flat colors and lineart, and then I clipped more layers above to it. I used multiply for shading. For lighting, I used Add (glow) and Lighten.

I just wanted to do a simple background, so I used asset brushes for grass and clouds. For the final touches on the character I used Overlay, and airbrushed some colors that let her fit in naturally with the background.

Done!

Oh, and another cool feature is the layer color. It doesn’t do anything to the drawing, but it changes the color of the layer you select, so you can find it easily out of the whole list. For my drawing, I used green to represent the layer with the grass she carries.

In the original from 6th grade, I didn’t give her a name. I just translated ‘cow woman’ into Greek and thought, “Yep, that’s good enough!” But now I’m finally giving her a name: Adelaide. Looking back, I should have given her a septum piercing, which looks very similar to a cow’s nose ring. But I didn’t think of it in time. When I draw her next, I’ll be sure to add it.

I hope this tutorial has taught you something, or at the very least, made you inspired to go outside of your comfort zone. Incorporated animals into your characters can make for fascinating and unique designs.

Learning a concept completely new is usually hard but always worth it. To continue studying animal anatomy after this, do meaningful practice and most importantly, have fun!