Generic Species

Dedicated to furry art and fursuits with dog syndrome or otherwise look vague. I'll also post tutorials and helpful information. This is NOT a bad art/suit blog and is not intended to make fun of artists, only to point out generalizing of species and dog syndrome. I will do requests for specific species, suits, pictures, or topics.

[genericspecies]

I have animal characters I making for an animated pilot, but I have a dilemma. I don't know whether to choose obscure species or well known species. Some say I should use popular species, while a few others have said I should use obscure species to be unique. Which would you recommend?

Depends on what you’re going for.  Neither are bad choices on their own.  Popular species tend to have more symbolism and stereotypes attached that people are going to expect and be more likely to interpret the characters through.  This can be good or bad depending on what you’re going for.  Visual shorthands, symbolism, and tropes can make it easier to communicate certain ideas faster.  There’s also opportunity to actively incorporate them into the story, Zootopia stands out as an example.

Uncommon species don’t have as much baggage attached (though many will still have some meaning, it just won’t be as well known) and there’s less opportunity to try to interpret them through the lens of ‘how does this character fit the archetype of its species’.  Some people will see that as a benefit or that it gives them more freedom, others will see is as a negative since they’re not communicating anything about the character with the species choice.

[koloss-part-2]

somebody: If you had a superpower, what would it be?

most people: *some comic book shit*

me:

[mystrothedefender]

“What’s your superpower?” “Bethesda glitch.”

[tunnelsnakefool]

[tunnelsnakesfool]

It’s a unique skill set

[genericspecies]

How come so many cartoon animals have human-style eyebrows (Looney Tunes animals and Disney Mickey and Friends animals are generally exceptions to the rule, Disney Animated Canon animals are usually examples)?

It’s just standard anthropomorphization.  Eyebrows help make expressions more readable and faces more ‘human’.  Often even if an animal character doesn’t have human eyebrows, they’ll still have a prominent, flexible brow ridge (sometimes emphasized by markings) that functions similarly.  Whether or not they use eyebrows or just a brow ridge depends on if they’re going for something more anthropomorphic vs something more naturalistic or ‘feral’.

[genericspecies]

I've noticed that in a sizable number of cartoons, skunks, which are carnivorans, and squirrels, which are rodents, are conflated with each other facial-feature-wise. Some cartoon skunks are given buck teeth and even convex muzzles, traits more consistent with squirrels. In Sheriff Callie's Wild West, the squirrels and skunks don't appear that different from palette swaps of each other apart from the buck teeth on the squirrels and the white dorsal stripes on the skunks.

Yeah, that might have to do with a few things, firstly basing things mostly or purely off of existing designs, secondy designing things from templates meaning that animals with (often superficially) similar features will use the same template, and finally very wide confusion about what a ‘rodent’ is.

The last is kind of a pet peeve of mine where people use ‘rodent’ to refer to just about any small mammal that isn’t a cat or dog.  I think this might contribute to people drawing animals like skunks with rodent features.

[genericspecies]

Instantly thought of your blog when I saw this.

[genericspecies]

Both cartoon cats and cartoon rabbits are often drawn with white feet, but why are cartoon rabbit ones usually slipper-like (white palms and soles and entire finger and toe areas) whereas cartoon cat ones usually sock-like (entire feet/hindpaws to the ankles and entire hands/forepaws to the wrists)?

For cats, it’s probably because those are actual cat markings, especially for those with white bellies and faces.  For rabbits, it appears to be an actual marking on some, but it’s hard to get definitive images, here’s the best I could find:

(source)

No real reason, just how a feature people decided to keep.

[genericspecies]

Can you go over anteater anatomy as well? I heard the biggest mistake that artists make is that they keep drawing the anteater's mouth under the really long snout and nose when real life anteaters have really tiny mouths on he end of their snout.

Yeah, the thing to keep in mind with their faces is that their ‘nose’ is actually their jaws, more like a dog muzzle than an elephant trunk.  Their lips are at the very tip of their muzzle and don’t pull back.  Actually, their mouths barely move at all.  Some sources say their upper and lower jaws are fused, but other sources don’t mention this at all, and there’s a picture of a skull with an open mouth, so idk how legit that is.  This is pretty much the extent of their facial movements:

(source)

Their facial anatomy is pretty straight-forward and close to their skulls.  They don’t have much muscle or soft tissue on their heads, and they don’t need to because they don’t chew, bite, or have expressive faces.

(source)

Their bodies are a bit weirder, imo.  In contrast to their delicate, slender head, they’re quite bulky, muscular, and covered in thick fur.  Their hind legs are plantigrade:

But on their forelimbs they walk on the sides of their knuckles with their claws curled under:

All put together, they look like this:

(source)

This is what their skeleton looks like:

(source)

[genericspecies]

Can you explain/go over moose anatomy? I think the problems I have with their anatomy mostly stems from their faces...

Oh man meeses have some weird stuff going on.  Something to keep in mind with them is that they are giant deer.  Giant deer with really weird noses.  Their bodies, ears, and eyes are all very similar to other deer, but bulky and muscular.  They have more of a hump to their back, which I assume is to attach muscles to hold up their large heads and heavy antlers to.  You can see that their heads are pretty deer-like in some pictures, especially of younger moose and cows, like this:

(source)

(source)

The biggest difference between moose and other deer is that big fleshy nose.  It superficially resembles an equine nose, but the nasal bones end further up the face than a horse:

From what I can tell from the few images I can find (here’s a gallery of someone processing a moose head for meat, it’s graphic, click at your own risk), most of that nose is made up of cartilage and muscular lip tissue.

So that’s what’s going on inside.  What this results in is a big, bulbous nose that is much rounder than most deer.  Their upper lip is soft and hangs over their chin.  The nostrils are long and run to the tip of the lip.  It actually curves up from the nasal bones which can even give some of them a kind of s-shape to the top of their profile.

(source)

It’s less pronounced in adult bulls, but still discernible:

(source)

[genericspecies]

Is this breaking up of the shapes one of the big reasons why there are fewer all black cats in 2D animation than you think there would be (there are many all-white female cats, mice rabbits, ducks, and geese) many yellow footed and beaked cartoon crows and ravens, and not as many one-tone fur/feather/scale/skin/e.t.c. animal characters (like Winnie the Pooh) as you think there would be for animation mediums that can't go much more complex with animal patterns (spots, stripes, e.t.c.)?

Pretty much.  It helps to define front/back as well as make important features like hands and faces pop out.  You actually see similar features in non-animal cartoon and comic media, like superhero costumes and such.

[genericspecies]

I see why white and lighter colored muzzles, eye patch markings, facial masks, bellies, and feet/toes on cartoon mammal characters, both in general and depending on the species, is common in animal character design in 2D animation, but what is with the peach/beige/cream colored facial masks, muzzles, and bellies on otherwise all white-furred mammal characters, especially white rabbits, cats, and dogs?

I think it’s still about breaking up the shape, but on light/white animals adding a white accent wouldn’t be possible without making the base colour of the animal darker.  There is also some truth to the accented areas being peach- in lighter furred animals, their pink skin is visible in areas where their fur is thinner/shorter, so this might have been why peachy tone were chosen instead of, say light grey or light brown.

[genericspecies]

Can you do a post on how species accurate the main, major, and minor characters in Disney's The Lion Guard TV series are? For example, it's one of the very few animated shows that features species accurate aardvarks, a species that is usually hard hit by the Generic Species (looking like the species it is, but having species inaccurate traits, like most dinosaurs and almost all pterosaurs in media) and Informed Species (not looking like the species it is said to be) tropes.

I quite like the style they went with.  It’s distinct from the style of the movies, but similar enough to look coherent with them.  Lion and hyena character designs closely follow the stylization of the original film.  The lions are actually pretty realistically proportioned and even have only slightly more pronounced stops, though in the Lion Guard their anthropomorphic features are exaggerated.  The hyenas are more like round dogs with ears that resemble cropped dog ears.

For other characters I’ll start with Bunga.  I feel his design takes after Timon, walking on two legs with generic ‘cartoon animal’ facial features.  His body shape is about what you’d expect for a bipedal rendition of a honey badger.  The roundness of his facial features works, but his muzzle is very short for a badger, looking almost completely flat in some scenes.  He also has rather rodent-like teeth.

Beshte is a really nice design for a cartoon hippo.  There’s not much to say about him, honestly.  His nose does look kind of like a rabbit nose, but hippos do actually have a ‘V’ shaped crease between their nostrils.  His lower teeth could be positioned differently, but to be fair, hippo teeth are very unique and might be difficult to make look aesthetically pleasing and animate them.

Ono isn’t quite a generic bird, but his species is also not apparent.  I wasn’t really sure he was an egret until I looked it up, and there’s no information on what specific species he is, though the cattle egret is white and its breeding plumage includes an orange crest.  His eyes are very large and forward facing for an egret, but their positioning relative to the bill is accurate.  To hold his large eyes, his head is also very large and round.

I’m going to be kinda biased here, because to be blunt, I don’t like Fuli’s design at all.  I feel like she stylistically clashes with the rest of the main and supporting cast and is very awkward looking.  Aside from her body, she doesn’t look like a cheetah.  While I would expect a cheetah’s spots to be simplified and arranged in a pattern, hers don’t look like cheetah spots, if anything, they look more like clouded leopard spots.  Her face bothers me because it looks strangely humanoid, especially compared to every other design.  Proportionally it has more in common with Captain Amelia (a feline-like humanoid) than a cheetah.  It doesn’t help that the original film opened with a lovely stylized cheetah design.

[genericspecies]

Can you do a post on the Netflix TV show BoJack Horseman and how the animals are portrayed? One episode has a hen with a body completely like that of a woman and a head completely like that of a normal hen named Becca. She behaved like a chicken whereas most of the other animal characters (who also have completely human bodies and completely animal heads) behaved like humans but had a few behaviors from their given species.

I haven’t seen the show, but I’m aware of it and really like the art style.  The animals seem to be more like humans in masks stylistically with animal heads on completely human bodies, not even the tails that are standard with furry.  The heads are not altered very much and also look very much like their species.  I can’t really speak much beyond shallow aesthetics though.

[tessgarman]

[genericspecies]

Animal color stereotypes vary by culture. For example, white is a positive color in Western cultures, but a negative color in China. That is why the white peacock in Kung Fu Panda 2 is the main villain. What are some other cultural differences in animal color stereotypes besides calico cats being of more significance in Japan than in the USA? One example of a non-Japanese-related western animation calico is Sheriff Callie of Sheriff Callie's Wild West.

I’m actually not very well-versed in colour symbolism across cultures.  I know that in some places black cats are considered lucky.  This isn’t strictly colour, but in different countries and cultures different breeds of animals might be more common in the same jobs.

The best thing to do if you want to know more about animal colour/breed meanings in different cultures would be to do research on a specific culture and/or region.

[genericspecies]

What are the different hair, fur, and feather color tropes for various different animals (black fur, brown fur, orange fur, grey fur, yellow/blonde fur, white fur, black and white fur) and birds (black feathers, white feathers, red feathers, yellow feathers)?

Black furred animals are more likely to be evil or, if a ‘good’ character, be snarky/appear mean at first.  White furred animals are more likely to be ‘good’.  Specifics vary culturally, like calico cats have special significance in Japan, but for the most part, there aren’t too many.

With generic birds you have the same white/black significance, and then you also sometimes see things like blue/pink gendering, and a more important character having brighter colours.  Generic birds are often more decorative than real characters though, so sometimes their colors are more based on what looks best than anything.  It also should be noted that blue birds do have contradictory symbolism- while blue in other contexts is often used to symbolize sadness, blue birds can symbolize happiness and luck.

[genericspecies]

How come there aren't that many cartoon cats with a facial blaze marking, a white marking from nose bridge to forehead, when they are very common on real cats?

It might just be too complicated, difficult to get symmetrical, or easy for it to become inconsistent.

[genericspecies]

Which real world species traits don't work well or don't look appealing in cartoons and comics? For example, there are laterally placed eyes in a majority of vertebrate animals, especially prey ones. Another is the long and somewhat pointed muzzle of real black bears. Yet another is is the a real spider's head is part of its cephalothorax, not separate from it.

I don’t think there is any feature that couldn’t be made to look appealing in some style.  It does depend though on what the artist is going for and if there are any limitations (for example costumes that still have to be worn on a human frame).  A long pointy muzzle might look better in a style that’s generally pointier but be lost in a rounder, chubbier style.  An artist trying to make an anthropomorphic spider costume might make the head separate just because the wearer has a neck.