Just A Random Blog

scalies are cute

Send one of the following symbols and one of my OC’s names and I’ll doodle:

Something that I see a lot of in artists online who tend towards “furry” characters is this general cartoony caricature of a dog-person… but every one of them looks the same, whether a dog, wolf, fox, whatever.  So I did a very (very) quick sketch illustrating how this “generic human-dog” face could be improved to clarify what the devil your audience is looking at!

Not all dogs look the same… and very, VERY few, if ANY, have a muzzle that bulges out after the forehead before tapering to the nose. The muzzle is a gentle taper from the slope and small (SMALL!!) bump of the forehead to the tip of the little black gumdrop.  The exact shape of this muzzle depends on what kind of dog you’re drawing!

And by God, please – not every dog has satellite dishes for ears.

These are all uber-cartoonified, uber-exaggerated animals.  And yet, there is no question what animal each one of them is, unless you simply haven’t seen the original animals before.

I don’t know all these characters’ names; I haven’t yet watched the show.  But we’ve got two dog characters as examples right here: a hyena and a red fox.  You can tell exactly which one is which just by a glance.

Exaggeration and cartoonification doesn’t mean ignoring the source material. If I were to further cartoonify my examples above:

And to give a more “anthro” example, which I shared in another post:

Both dogs are still easily distinguishable for what they are, even with their features as exaggerated as this.

Like, I’m an animator and character designer by trade.  I’m not unfamiliar with cartooning.  Regardless of drawing style, whether realistic or cartoony, the same principles apply: if you’re trying to make a character resemble something, you have to figure out what about that thing is recognizable and use it to your advantage.  Show, don’t tell.

This is excellent advice, but you’re making this point way too late when it should’ve been in the first picture. What should be suggestions instead come across as misleading guidelines or “rules” when context is really crucial here. Don’t get me wrong: these suggestions are very good, and I appreciate them being made, since character designs of animal-characters have the risk of feeling weak when they aren’t recognizable as their chosen animal. 

The problem here is that these become less suggestions when you say in bold red caps “DON’T DO THIS!” at the very start. What you’re raising is an argument than a suggestion with a given context: “ignoring the source material is a bad thing” vs “if you’re actively trying to make your character resemble an animal, here are some tips that can help”

When there are some great designs that break these guidelines pretty hard, people are going to get bothered and confused when you say “DON’T DO THIS!” as opposed to, “this might be weak if you aren’t careful.”

Ren and Stimpy here break every suggestion made, for example, because the resemblance isn’t crucial (more for Stimpy than Ren, I’ll admit, but it still applies to both). Neither needs to resemble anything more than “pet animals, lol”, because their shapes and features stand on their own. They’re interesting to look at because they barely resemble anything on this earth. They were deliberately designed as such.

The first example is bad or “generic” because it’s lacking in identity, and how important resemblance will be is purely up to what the artists intend with the design. Aggretsuko’s characters work because the animals they represent relate to themselves as people and their personality traits.

Ren and Stimpy have no need for species resemblance. What they need to resemble are the concepts they represent: Stimpy as a goof, Ren as thinly veiled sack of crazy.