#backwards legs

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

How would I need to change the hips of a semi humanoid creature to be able to have the legs and feet bend fully backwards?

I'm having a little trouble visualizing what exactly this means. the hips joints don't really affect how a foot can bend, that's more to do with the ankle joint. you could make the ankle more flexible by modeling it after the ankles of tree climbing primates! humans have lost a lot of the foot flexibility due to becoming plantigrade bipedal creatures more focused on walking than climbing. but primates who live in the trees have different ankle joints from us that allow them to rotate their foot with a much broader range than us.

as for bending the leg backwards from the hip, that's something humans can do already! it just takes practice. if you've ever seen someone do the splits, or gymnasts, dancers, and ice skaters holding their foot up by their head, that is all possible because of hip flexibility and muscle training!

I've found some resources on contortionists for a good reference on how humans can be extremely bendy.

here's an article about it. and a video:

unless you are talking about rotating the leg in some manner? like with the knee bending the opposite way? flipping the leg around so the toes point backwards? like which of these things are we talking about:

(image description: simple sketches of humanoid figures, with no arms drawn. in the first image, there is a regular humanoid figure standing still, followed by two copies of it with a leg drawn in a very pale bright color to show it bending backwards at the hip. one of them is bending the leg backwards in a heel-first motion while the other is bending the leg backwards by rotating it up in a knee-first motion. the second image is the humanoid figure standing still again, but this time with a leg redrawn in a bright color to show it with the knee and foot facing backwards. end description.)

if it's the first one, I don't think you'll need to make many changes to the anatomy at all, just do a lot of studies on images and videos of real humans that show the full range of hip movement. if it's the second one, you're going to need to tackle a lot more details than just what the hip joint looks like. why are their legs backwards? how do they move? is this actually a misinterpretation of the shape of digitigrade or bird legs? birds certainly might look like they have "backwards knees" but that is actually their ankle! they usually have incredibly short femurs and their knees remain so close to the body that they're hidden by the feathers, making the leg appear to have a backwards knee.

and if this is really a humanoid leg turned backwards, and they do move like this, with their foot turned around and all, then we also have to reconsider the shape of the musculature and the whole pelvis and maybe even the spine. They certainly couldn't have a humanoid set of glutes. It's a very tricky bit of anatomy to make this work! might have to fudge a lot of it and just let it look weird, because it does fit right into the uncanny valley and I don't think there's a way to design this and not have it feel uncanny. lean in on the weirdness of it! that would be a really good design for a horror creature, honestly.

(image description: more sketches of a humanoid figure with the backwards facing legs. first is the same sketch of it standing still, then a sketch of it running, and a sketch attempting to work out what the pelvic skeleton would look like, which is mostly just a smaller and narrower version of a human pelvis. end description.)

if you could send a new ask with more clarifying details, I might be able to help out better! hopefully I managed to provide resources and questions that will help you flesh out your idea in a way that works for you! good luck!

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Don't get your hopes up

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