Okapitaur Sheet

Griffins are my favorite mythological animal, but they are hard to draw. On the contrary, though, centaurs are my second-favorite mythological animal, and they are fun and interesting to draw. And looking through the centaur artwork on deviantART, you come across something unique now and then. Quite a few variants from the original Greek creature: they've got Zebrataurs (apparently, they are denoted by the "taur" at the end of the name), Giraffetaurs, Cheetahtaurs, there was even a frog variant! Well, obviously my favorite centaur type is the Okapi variant--Okapitaurs, if you will. X3 A generous mixture of my favorite animal and my second-favorite mythological creature. And seeing how there was, like, ONE okapitaur drawing in existence (sans the one I did a bajillion years ago on Mars), I decided to help fill in the basket with a few of my own. So I developed them into a species and culture, and so am ready to unleash them onto the 1st Dimension so that they can do some butt-kicking in the Plains of Nold on Soviet Russiac.

So anyway, Okapitaurs are a race of creatures that reside on the lightly forested Plains of Nold. They're culture and way of life is very much like a stereotypical Great Plains American Indian culture, with tribes, tepees, blah blah blah. Being okapis, they associate themselves with O-Kapi, the God of Death (and therefore their symbol is the symbol of Typhon, O-Kapi's daddy-poo and Major God of Evil; but they aren't evil). The young-uns are quite small, but once they are about 30 they are full-sized, which is slightly taller than your average centaur. Every now and then, a tribe of okapitaurs may go into battle, but it isn't super often, since they prefer peace over violence (similar to Typhon, who hates violence).

Sorry that the picture is so dark, for some reasons I couldn't get Ulead to darken the colored pencil without darkening the white paper too (and contrast, though it made the paper white, made too much of the coloring white). On the bottom left is something I'm going to finish later; a child scolding a butterfly, because the butterfly stole his bag of money! Oh noes!

Drawn in pencil and colored in colored pencil (obviously). Lettering done on Ulead.

Soviet Russiac Okapitaurs (c) 2007 Me.
Centaurs (c) ? Greece.