they look quite lovely ^ ^ although i will have to agree that the male's back looks rather stiff.

I like the suggestions here to add more flora to the male along with the ones where people are drawing both of them to be not as lanky personally :)

Wonderful lovely gorgeous majestic beautiful peaceful perfection

Not a fan of the buffer suggestions for the male people are giving, but I definitely like the idea of more flora for the male to break up some of the empty space on the neck.
I'm also a fan of the floof and think it should stay.

Playing into the floral idea for the neck as well as giving the male some vines as well. Wanted to make the male's back match the hatchlings more since I'm not too much a fan of the board-straight back as it is currently. I think some amount of curvature to it does help the flow of the design more, since right now it sticks out pretty harshly.


Another edit to make it broader since I'm still not happy with the edited back on mine, but cervines are not a strong suit of mine so this is more suggestion than anything, really.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=99288&page=5#44 Author: Xedite Time Posted: 8/14/2021 at 6:00 PM Not a fan of the buffer suggestions for the male people are giving, but I definitely like the idea of more flora for the male to break up some of the empty space on the neck. I'm also a fan of the floof and think it should stay. Playing into the floral idea for the neck as well as giving the male some vines as well. Wanted to make the male's back match the hatchlings more since I'm not too much a fan of the board-straight back as it is currently. I think some amount of curvature to it does help the flow of the design more, since right now it sticks out pretty harshly. Another edit to make it broader since I'm still not happy with the edited back on mine, but cervines are not a strong suit of mine so this is more suggestion than anything, really.

I like the suggestion of both but the neck/chest still seems too far forward from the body which I feel is one of the biggest issues. Here is my possible fix. Compare it to the original to see what I mean, but all I really did was took the head,neck and flower area and scootched it back a bit, lineing the fluff up so it sweeps to the legs and underbelly smoothly.

EDIT: I also took the fluff part and moved it back some as well so it wasn't so pooched out and this way it doesn't make the neck look too thick.

I really like the leaves around the neck on this edit~ The body though looks weird. Like he is emaciated and too front heavy. Almost looks like he would fall forward because of how large his front is compared to the back. Lol But otherwise really good. Like the vines added too~ ^-^

Gave this another look over with yours and Aerimistress' suggestions and busted out some deer references to try to make this anatomy work better. I definitely like your suggestion as well and I think a large part of the issue with the concept that people have been seeing has been the "Disney-ified" balloon neck after looking at the general anatomy under redlines. Scaling it back seems to definitely help, with or without the back curvature.


So in my determination to get the anatomy more believably realistic while keeping some of the fantasy deer stylization to it, I thickened him up a bit and reshaped the back to be more in line with actual bucks without fully pushing the spine angle straight backed again. I don't think I'll be making any more edits since I'm pretty satisfied with this after taking the male Fae's anatomy under a microscope for a few hours.

I definitely dislike the curved back. Deer do not have curves on their back, but rather straight from their heads to their tails. If anything they have a slight bump where their shoulders are and where their hips are. I think the main problem with the body is that deer also don't have a curved belly like they are shown. In general deer look pretty bulky until you get to their elegant necks and delicate legs. (not saying they are board straight, just that the curves are very slight and understated.)

I think the issue between the front and back is that most deer heads are rather small with more blocky bodies. The male's, with the leaves and antlers, are huge compared to the body.

Ximph's edit makes it look more balanced because it seems like there is less 'head' and more body/neck.

I also still prefer the open chest with the leaves around the back of the neck and not across the chest.

Basically, the deer pictures I am looking at show deer with small heads and pretty bulky bodies and slender legs.

Making more accurate deer anatomy would be something along these lines which honestly from a character design standpoint comes off as a bit lackluster because you lose a lot of the individual character a design has.

Faelora are definitely inspired off real world animals but as they are a fantasy species and clearly cartoon stylized at that, I don't think they should be bound exclusively and modelled 100% after real world anatomy.
There is a reason stylization exists in art (generally to make things more visually dynamic and appealing) and style should be definitely taken into strong consideration here, especially in what would best fit the current style of the designs currently on site. Pushing things too far into the end of realism takes Sylesti out of being fantasy creatures and into the realm of just being animals plastered with fantasy elements.
I don't want this to get too off topic though, just trying to give some two cents as someone currently studying into character design.

The antlers seem like they're in a different position than the head.
The male's chest seems like the fluff could be a smidge less.
The male's leaves don't necessarily have to match the females but it's not quite as detailed and doesn't have vines draping off.
The female's back legs seem slightly off in position, but I can't pinpoint what's bothering me

Other than that... it's adorable and I love it