Common Fursona Design Traits

furries are obsessed with their OCS or maybe I'm just self-projecting no no Fraser definitely obsessed with the rosies I think fursuiting in general is kind of just like cosplaying an original character you like that character so much that you want to wear a costume of it that you pay a lot of money for put a lot of time in the making or sometimes both and we can also get really original with the designs and concepts for these characters in the communities that I frequent I met people with really unique species designs stories and all kinds of things that set them apart but be that as a maid there are still some design choices that I feel like are really consistently used and not that this makes them any less interesting at all but thinking about it got me curious and I thought maybe it's worth taking some time to look at these consistencies and analyze why they might happen and possibly even brush over how these relatively common design traits are used in really unique ways today I'll be going over some common fursona design traits and I'm going to talk about what they are why they may happen so often and some cool ways different designers use them oh and uh by the way I'll keep this really short and don't worry this time stamps in the description too for you to skip ahead if you want but I do have a patreon now if you want a way to support me financially and get some cool benefits a lot of Channel member benefits have moved on over to patreon and if you're interested in seeing exclusive content and even getting monthly free artwork then please consider checking that out there will be a link in the description okay annoying plug over let's get started one blue definitely Infamous and a strong opener I think furries are known to really like the color blue when it comes to designing their characters it's commonly observed that blue dogs are incredibly common OCS that people own by characters in a dog but he still has the color blue on him so maybe he fits in with that category it's funny to me because even though blue personas are so common in the furry community there are still so many characters who are iconic even though they all have that character design trait so why do we see this color so much well first blue is the most popular favorite color in the world and by a lot too I can't tell you exactly why while researching I found a couple of reasons and I'll slap them up on the screen here when I edit but I didn't see one that stood out as a reason that makes sense as to why blue has consistently been a self-reported favorite color but when you're designing a character especially your main Persona that is intended to represent you as a person it's not unlikely that your first idea is to build the color powder on your favorite color which is weird because my favorite color is red and I don't use my favorite color for my character's actual color palette but it's also possible that we have an easier time building a color palette around blue than other colors like for example red or green I didn't want a red main character I used red for his accessories and such but I didn't use red for his fur color and that was intentional one thing I want to make clear is that the word blue encompasses a lot of colors actually Light blues Royal Blues Navy Blues border colors that could be mistaken for blue or fit in with blue like aquamarine or Violet this character on the screen right now yeah he's a blue dog this character too also a blue dog very different energies but they're still both blue dogs and if you're including characters who might not be entirely blue but have some blue on them that's defining a lot of characters I'd go as far to argue that blue is not the most common Persona design color but rather white inclusive of off-white colors because not only does that include plain old white includes pale versions of every color on the color wheel and tons of designers use white and off-white in their color palette for Designing purposes as a form of contrast or detail but we don't think about how many times we see white on a character we think about how many times we see blue on a character because it really stands out to us if you see a character that has white and blue would you call it a blue person or wait for Sona my character has a lot of off-white on him but he might not be regarded as a white fursona but rather categorized as a blue one food for thought so if blue is so common does that mean you're unoriginal for using it no not at all again there's so many different shades of blue that all communicate very different feelings and energies really something to remember now and for basically every point I bring up in this video is that designing your characters for fun and you shouldn't be discouraging yourself from using certain Concepts just because you've seen them before if you like the color blue and you want to use the color blue then go ahead and use the color blue like I said earlier there are a lot of people who have blue characters but they're still iconic in their own ways because there's more to a character design than just the color you use for its fur the body type the patterns the accessories the design choices they'll make up your OC the colors are just one part of that the personality of the person behind it above all else can completely change how someone views that character and can make it original and unique even if you have the most basic Persona design ever you're still your own person two head for Tufts this can be regarded as a common art style Choice rather than a common design trait choice but I thought it included anyway because I was thinking in the shower as one does that wow a lot of furry straw there's a little hair tops and what I feel to the topic of this video to my toys audience they confirmed my thoughts that this is definitely a pretty commonly occurring thing people brought it up without me even mentioning my thoughts to them if you don't know what I mean by little hair toughs a lot of artists draw two or three or more cuffs of fur in the space between their characters ears I know I do it I know a lot of my friends do it it's a super common art choice so the reason I draw these little tops is because honestly I just don't really like leaving that space between the ears empty it feels kind of weird and unadorned there's not many other parts of a furry character that are so bald looking like that except maybe the limbs so I feel like it's kind of like a cute little thing to add to fill that space this also isn't really a new thing at all those little furtuffs are present in a lot of art styles from older cartoons and media on furry characters and it's very possible that the movies and shows we grew up on influenced how we learned to draw on our own not to mention we could have also learned from each other since so many furry artists draw those little furtuffs on the head and we could have deserved this and replicate it in our own style a bandwagon if you will is this unoriginal maybe but it doesn't really matter because while this thing might be an art choice that a lot of people do people draw these stuffs in really different stylized ways and I don't think you should be overthinking how you draw this little tops of fur on the head that much it's okay you're fine three scarves bandanas and collars furries really like putting neck accessories on their character it might not be something you've paid much attention to but if you think about it you'll start to realize how incredibly prevalent this design choice is I know I absolutely love adding neck accessories to my designs and the reason I do that is because honestly the neck feels just kind of empty when there's nothing on it and I also feel like colors and bandanas and scarves are just pretty cute accessories probably the reasoning a lot of fruits use this design trait is because dogs and cats wear colors and sometimes bandanas and if you're drawing an anthropomorphic dog or cat it makes sense that they'd wear that accessory and it also just kind of makes them look like a cute little house cat or something something that a lot of artists do to diversify their neck accessories is change up the charms or styles of them like having a spiked collar as opposed to a regular one or having shaped charms that hang from the collar I don't think collars or bandanas or whatever overused any extent because I think it adds a level of charm to the character design and I really enjoy adding this trait to a lot of my characters I never get tired of seeing them 4. hybrids and Frankenstein species this is another Super common thing that first like to do with their characters either making their character a hybrid to multiple existing species or even just not having their character be a hybrid but giving it Standalone traits that are from another animal or species my character is a hybrid cat dragon he's mostly cat but he's got horns and a forked tongue and wings and a dragon tail so I could speak with a lot of people when I say hybrids are really cool and fun and that's probably the main reason why they're so common I think we're also often split between two or more species we really like when we're designing our Sona we can't prioritize one over all else so we end up just merging them or in the case of frankensteined animals there is one isolated trait from a single species that we really like but we're not into the whole look of it so we just bag that one trait and we run like having a cat with horns it's not a hybrid or anything it just has horns because horns are cool I think the most often Frankenstein tray I see is wings like they're not a half bird or half bat or anything they just have wings because wings look cool and they're also fun to draw a lot of people design their character with art in mind there are some things that we just enjoy drawing because it's satisfying or it's fun or it feels space that might otherwise feel too empty see it's not that complicated we just feel like throwing design treats on our characters for the entertainment or aesthetic value of it it's extremely common for free artists or designers to not confirm to realism when they're making their fursona like yeah maybe certain combinations of species don't commonly or can't even exist but it's fun don't be discouraged for making your character a hybrid because you think it might be too tacky it's not in fact having interesting species combinations can make a character even more unique and cool 5. stylized hair super duper common to give furry characters some sort of hair like not just those head Tufts I talked about but literal hair especially split or dual toned hair so I think the reason why this is a thing is for multiple reasons one thing is that hair adds a lot of personality to Art and character design designers may add stylized hair intentionally for the purpose of communicating some sort of energy or aesthetic to that character spiky hair might look more rambunctious or messy for example another thing is that freezer anthropomorphized meaning they have human characteristics and hair is a very distinct human characteristic so it makes sense why it's really commonly included in furry designs a lot of people design their fursona with themselves in mind and not much screams you better than your hair my character has black hair and I have black hair does it look exactly like this no definitely not I don't know if it's even realistically possible for it to look exactly like this but it's at least somewhat recognizable in the way that I see some aspects of my style and energy in this design and I think the hair color in style is a big part of that with mentioning that again artists like adding things to the design just because it's kind of fun to draw and hair is definitely one those things in my opinion if you're looking for some ways to make your fursona's hair more unique you could maybe add some color combinations like dyeing the tips or splitting the colors half and half 6. heterochromia and inverted eyes definitely not as common as the rest of these but something I see super often is eyes that are inverted as in the eye whites are a dark color and eyes that are two different colors or are multi-colored I think there could be multiple contributing factors to the frequency of this design trade one could be what I mentioned earlier with how we might be split between two colors that we really like and don't want to pick one over the other so we end up just using both or all of them another thing is that it's possible that the character designer had some form of heterochromia and wanted to incorporate that into their fursona it could also be something of a bandwagon effect like the other design traits on this list also something that I personally experienced is that with a lot of color palettes you have a main set of colors that compromises most of the color palette and your contrasting colors meant to well contrast with your main color palette this isn't how every color palette works but it's definitely how a lot of them do while a lot of characters use one contrasting color sometimes we include two or more and if you're trying to use them kind of evenly in the design sometimes splitting the eyes into two different colors is an easier way of achieving that so that was basically everything I wanted to add here if you did think of any others that I may have left out of this list feel free to leave a comment something I do want to emphasize is that you shouldn't worry too much about your originality if there's something really important to you that you want on your fursona design then don't be discouraged from adding it because you feel like it's unoriginal or something the furry fandom is a hobby there's no reason we can't have similarities with each other and those similarities also help us form a sense of community okay hey what's up ant card viewers shout out to you guys for real hope this video was entertaining for you sorry if my voice doesn't sound like it usually does I'm kind of sniffly and nasally right now or at least more so than usual because of the weather getting colder and all don't forget that patreon thing I mentioned earlier the more patreon supporters I have the more exclusive content and stuff I'll show to them and you also get to you know be here with the other patreon supporters and channel members patreon supporters will get a cool little badge next to their name based on their tier that's so cool isn't that so cool I think it's cool anyways thank you for watching and I'll see you guys next time

Channel: Qwizz

Views: 12,936

Keywords: furry, furry artist, furry art, furry fandom, furry design, fursona, character design

Id: IUhpV1NwvCs

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2023