Design Antromorphic design without threading in furry territory :)

[Niels]

I have a (I think) fun idea for a game where the player characters, npc's and enemies are all based on forest animals (a bit like in old European fables). But I'm still searching for a way to design my characters antomorphic without looking like furries

Anyone has any pointers or names from games that do this well?

 

[Yal]

Could you specify how something "looks like a furry", first of all? Kinda hard to avoid something that loosely defined. (Also, all furries aren't sexual fetishists, stop stigmatizing them <__<)


As for character design... there's this obscure platform series released by a japanese company called Service Games that did that pretty well... you might have heard about it sometimes. They released a sequel in 2006 that got lots of attention.

Spoiler

Other than that, I'd recommend old Disney character designs... you can't tell what animals most of their characters are supposed to be.

 

[Guest User]

generally speaking, avoid cartoony eyes and human shoulder/torso anatomy.

if we get pedantic, though, it's better to focus on what you like and don't like rather than trying to avoid the relative vagueness of 'the furries', they're a diverse group. no matter what you do, there's going to be a furry out there doing the same thing. so the decision between 'hands' and 'paws' is unlikely to be very easy if it's based on trying to read your future player's mind and know which of the two options they happen to consider to be "more furry".

on the technical side, figuring out what animals you even want to use is also a good place to start. even with scratch-built animal people, taking a look at the anatomy and behavior of various animals that have similar traits will help you actually build the things. chances are, what you or anyone defines as 'furry' are more stylistic qualities in the art rather than the actual composition of the characters themselves. ymmv, but sometimes stylistic decisions like that can be made harder than necessary if you don't actually have a basic 'prototype' or 'blueprint' of your character(s) already in your head/on paper/wherever.

 

[GMWolf]

Use pigeons, moles and fish. Hard to see those as 'furries'.
But as everyone said above. Don't over think it.

 

[Khao]

Honestly, don't bother. Just do whatever looks good, people will call it furry regardless, it's not something you can control.

Alternatively, use animals without fur so that they're literally wrong.

 

[Niels]

Yeah I was looking into Disney, also there was a indie game released on steam not long ago which was some sort of rts/boardgame which name is forgot, it had a rabbit and some other animals on the box art. it looked awesome.

The art style I less prefer is Dust: an elysian tale.

 

[Ninety]

No one's called Overgrowth a furry game despite having a cast exclusively consisting of anthropomorphic animals. Largely because it actually remembers that its characters are animals, so they have animal eyes and animal-influenced physiology, for example, and aren't just generic bipedals with a snout and fox ears. I'd suggest basing your characters on animals first, and let biology influence your design, rather than looking to other anthropomorphic examples (such as furry art) and imitating it. It probably helps to have more serious designs than typical furry art if you're trying to avoid comparisons (see again Overgrowth, which is brutally violent and doesn't glamorise or sexualise its animal influences).

Edit: also @Yal, the OP never mentioned sexualisation. If furries don't want to be defined by the explicit stuff maybe they should actually distance themselves from it instead of complaining pre-emptively? I'm not sure if you are one, but just a thought.

 

[Niels]

BTW the game with a awesome art style I couldn't remember was Armello

https://goo.gl/images/Drqp1S

 

[HammerOn]

What did you draw?
You need to do some try and error and draw them in multiply ways until you come up with one that you like.
Most of the time we are unable to put it on paper even with a great idea before starting and the skill to do it. That's because we don't make multiply attempts until something like what we have in mind appears. We almost never get it right in the first try.
That's why, for any case, I recommend you to just start drawing until it looks good for you.