How do you decide what fursonas your characters have? I get asked "Oh, what fursona does this character have?" And I just don't know how to assign them at all. The closest I've gotten is joking that a Very Tall Character is obviously an okapi or giraffe. Can parents and children in Fursona verse be different animals? (It's 330am, I apologize for incoherency))
No worries! I'm sick rn so I'll probably be a little incoherent myself </3
It's a mix of personality, physical appearance and their place in the story. Also sometimes comes down to what do I wanna see
As far as my characters go, only Jury and her boss actually have furry designs (technically I've never actually drawn 3099 as a furry but it's not that different from his animal-headed look that I usually draw him with)
Jury is a hyena* because she's very family oriented- the people she cares about come first in her life. That said, she's still a killer. She's still got those opportunistic tendencies that she learned from her boss. That- and hyenas are pleasantly round- Jury is literally just fat because I wanted her to be. There's no real in-story reason beyond her and 3099 being better taken care of than the average citizen. I just like how it looks. Hence. She is a hyena
*jury is not a specific Type of hyena. Technically she's a spotted hyena but she has stripes because drawing spots in a believably random pattern makes me actually go crazy. So she's got stripeys instead
Jury's Boss/3099 is a coyote- While Jury's fursona is different from her "symbolic" animal representation, honestly nothing fits 3099 better than a coyote to me. It was originally because I wanted him to be a very typically American animal- but coyotes are also just kind of culturally significant. They're opportunists in real life, they've lured people in with what looks like play behavior* but is actually just a way of sizing you up, and in folklore they're cunning tricksters.
*this is mostly a fault of people's ignorance about animal body language but the average person without experience does seem to think coyotes are just playing when they do this-
As far as appearance, 3099's face is intentionally never shown or described, so instead of giving him an anthropomorphized face like my regular furry designs, he just has the same coyote face I draw him with normally. It's Jury's brain intentionally abstracting things.
For other characters I have better reasonings, Jury n Co aren't really finished as far as furry designs go because I've been slacking off- sooo here's some more examples just based on my HL furry au
I'll start with Alyx to answer your other question- at least in my universe they can be, but it'll result in a hybrid. Alyx is a mix of King Cheetah (regular cheetah with a color mutation) and Asiatic Cheetah (fluffy cheetah with a bulkier build). So she's a very fluffy King Cheetah. She's a cheetah because I wanted her to be quick and agile, but other big cats felt too bulky and I didn't want to design a domestic cat because I sucked at drawing them at the time. So cheetahs came to mind for their slimmer builds. Cheetahs have kind of dog like temperaments- they're friendly and curious, which I thought was fitting for the Vances- though cheetahs have crazy anxiety, which I decided not to draw from because it's not very fitting for this family. They have their worries but it's not full blown anxiety.
Eli is an Asiatic Cheetah and Azian is a King Cheetah :]
For a better example there's also my Freemance ship kid Azian- she's a hybrid of a terrier mutt and a cheetah! She has the more stark white of a terrier with the spotted coat and mantle of a cheetah. And her ears are a little more pointed and angled upwards.
As for Gordon, she's a mutt, but she shows a lot of terrier. I wanted her to look a little generic because she is the player character- she's meant to be an every-man though she's got her own personality as implied by the games, she's got a very very postcard family dog look to her, with the terrier scruff helping to emphasize her facial hair as a more identifing trait. She's also a terrier (specifically Jack Russell) because those guys are used to flush animals out of burrows. They go in holes and stuff. Gordon goes in vents.
Aaand Barney- he's also a mutt. He's a (silver sable) German Shepherd + Malamute. He's got that gshep work orientation with the sass and heavier build of a malamute. I specifically chose the silver sable coat for Barney because it looked more like him. In earlier sketches of my furry Barney design I always knew I wanted him to have a more black and white design but malamutes were too cold color wise- the gshep introduced some warmer cream colors into the design.
