Becoming a Centaur: Suggestions for Horse Legs

 Arguably, the most difficult part of the horse half are the legs. They are oddly articulated and thin. When translating that into a costume, it becomes a bit of an issue because if the leg structure is not sturdy, it will make the horse half very heavy and droopy. 

So, let's look at the source! 

Horse Anatomy 101

Hind Leg Bones

This is what the bones of the horse's hind leg look like. Already it looks like things are pointing in every which way! But from the bottom up we have the hoof bone (coffin), the pastern (toe bone), fetlock joint (technically like a knuckle joint but it looks like an ankle), cannon bone (the tarsal bones of your foot), the hock joint (like your heel and ankle), Tibia, knee joint, femur, hip socket into the pelvis. This skeleton shows a bit of spine. 

While this may look complicated, it can be simplified. 

Simplified Skeletons

When creating the hind legs for our costume, this simplified skeleton will help serve as our guide for measurements and joint placement. 

So now, let's get into different ways we can express this anatomy in costume form. 

The Stationary Leg Method

If you do not plan to have the legs move, then the process for creating the legs is a little simpler. The placement, size and sturdiness of the leg will help support the back end of the costume. This distributes the weight of the costume so it's not all hanging off a belt. 

Cylinder Legs

The design of the leg does not need to resemble reality! As mentioned in the design considerations post, if you are leaning into more of a cartoon look, then cylindrical legs without any joints is a viable solution. It's the sturdiest and possibly the easiest method. The costume will still convey "horse". 

These can be constructed from cardboard tubes or PVC pipes or other cylindrical shaped things. 

Standing Leg

The straight standing leg is the 2nd most sturdy option. Measurements are going to heavily depend on what you plan to do for your front legs! The height of the hind leg will need to measure from the armature spine to the floor. This height will vary if you wear platform boots or travel flat footed. 

Total height and width

The width of the leg is going to be a little bit of a challenge. The back canon bone should be as thick as your calves. When the leg is perfectly straight, the back of the hock and cannon bone line up just beyond the edge of the buttocks. The back edge of the cannon and hock should be almost perfectly vertical. These are not like the hind legs of a cat or dog where this part often sits at an angle. 

Using the measurement from hip joint to floor and guesstimating the width, you want to create a "bounding box" for the leg pattern to fit into like the illustration above. Draw the horse leg within the rectangle. Use the paper pattern to test the leg length and eyeball where you want the joints to go. 

Another method for placing the joints is to measure your own human leg and make some corresponding  measurements. 

Fetlock = Ball of foot to the heel measurement.

Hock = crook of the heel/ankle to the back of the knee

Horse knee = back of knee to buttock crease

Knee to Hip socket = buttock crease to small of back/beginning of tail bone

(Note: these are just estimates since your human legs are the horse's front legs. It should help give a rough placement for the joints.)

Once you have created your Straight Leg Template, you can use the measurements to manipulate the leg joints a bit and create a different pose for the horse leg. Perhaps having the hoof resting like the picture above or use the image of the walking horse below to put some suggestion of motion. 

Using the template you can create the straight bones out of wood, pvc pipe or sturdy material. Or trace around the meaty portion and create the silhouette of the leg out of thick EVA mats or Furniture Foam or wood. Mark where the hip joint will connect with the body frame and pull some hose over the leg frame and begin stuffing around the joints and muscles. Alternatively you can start wrapping the leg with quilt batting or similar to create the more cylinder shape. 

Yet another alternative is to wait until you have sewn the horse hide covering and start stuffing while putting the covering on. 

Engineering Challenge: Animated Legs

I must admit, I really love the idea of having the hind legs move as I walk. It's so cool! But this does add some engineering issues. 

Muybridge Horse Walking

Living horses have muscles, ligaments and tendons to hold the joints in place and control the range of movement. Recreating this support system is not easy. 

Here are the main issues: 

1. In order to move the joints need to be able to move fairly easily. 
2. If the joints move easily, the leg structure cannot support weight! 
3. The weight of the horse half mostly rests on the belt system around the human. 
4. The more joints we have, the more the leg will scrunch up when weight is put on it. 

There are several ways to solve this issue. 

1. Limit the number of joints. You could only have the hip joint swing the leg like a pendulum or perhaps even just the hock. But fewer joints can help with keeping the leg sturdy and weight bearing.

Personally, I think having the hip, hock and fetlock is enough for most centaur costumes. 

2. External Supports. This means including somethings besides the legs to prop up the horse half. I've seen some costumes utilize a hidden brace under a long horse tail. 

See how the tail touches the ground?

Another example of external supports comes from the "unicycle" idea.

See the wheels?

3. Reinforce and Restrict the Joints. So I haven't perfected this idea but it imitates what ligaments do and tendons do. (Basing this a bit off a science project I did back in grade school. Dad and I made a working horse hoof, cat claw and human finger out of wood!) 

My hard to read notes and plans

In my idea, the horse knee isn't even considered a joint. It won't move. The hip socket is going to be a pendulum type joint. The hock you might make out that I'd attach pivot hinge joints, have some supportive ligaments (non-stretch material) so it doesn't swing too far back. The hock would also have a ligament from the back of the hock to the fetlock made out of bungee or rubber or a spring. The idea with this is the resistance of the spring/rubber/bungee holds the leg straight until moved and then it will snap back into place. The fetlock would be a swinging joint but include a bar and stopper peg so it can easily swing back when lifted but not bend the wrong way when set down. 

I don't know if this will work. A pulley system might be a more effective method. 

I am also looking for inspiration from my ball-jointed dolls. I have a BJD centaur. 

He stands on his own!

Tension from the elastic strings and the weight keep the joints together. Dolls n Stuff blog has a good example of how this works for the centaur dolls. 
 There may be a way to 3D print hollow ball jointed legs. 

(Again I emphasize this is just speculation, I have yet to put any of these solutions to the test.)

Human Legs as Horse Legs

Most of this post has been about the back legs, but we should discuss the front legs too. These are going to incorporate YOUR legs. So this means that, the relative thickness of the hind legs should corelate with your human legs. Usually, the front half is simply wearing leggings out of the same material you make the horse hide out of. 

Often includes feathering.

Including feathering can hide some of the human curves of your legs, especially hiding the fact that we walk on a full foot and not on our toes or toenails like a horse do. Yes, there are amazing yet painful to wear heel-less high heels that you can make a hoof out of and make your heel look like a fetlock! but that's going to have you on your toes all day. You may want to give yourself a bit less stress on your tender feet. Or bro, you gotta train up your muscles for real. 

Final Thoughts

This is something to break a few eggs with. I like a lot of the ideas from other centaur builds, but I think the ball-joint idea has legs. (It's getting late and I'm loopy.) 

There wasn't much in the way of talking about hooves, but I'll get around to them in the next post! Cheers!