Have you ever wanted to draw your own furry characters, but all you see is that Disney cartoonish style that's featured on almost every YouTube tutorial or anywhere else?
Well, suffer no more! I've been drawing furries since 2021, and I've learned a lot on how to draw furries without being the same brand style that is featured in many tutorials, so let’s get started!
First let's get on the common mistakes or first thoughts:
- YOU DON’T NEED TO DO IT HYPER-REALISTIC! This is a common mistake a lot of people think when it comes to drawing furry characters. As long as it’s understood its species or what’s happening in your drawing, you don’t need to go into full details on the design!
- You don’t need to stick to the most common species for your art. There are a lot of animals that exist in the world, you can go crazy choosing any animal of your liking.
- Learning to draw furries comes with learning to draw in general. Studying the fundamentals like gesture, anatomy and composition is essential to learn to draw furries by the cool way.
Alright! Now that we’re on the same page, let's begin!
First and foremost, let’s start choosing an animal to make a design out of it
For this tutorial, I’ll be choosing a crocodile!
Now that we have our species chosen, the first thing we want to do is try to study in order to understand how to draw them!
In these studies, the thing you want to do is understand what are the main shapes that the animal has and how it works. In my example, the shape of the head divides in two to make the mouth opening, having a small opening to make this possible. His body lengthens, connecting with the tail, and the limbs of the arms and legs are small, connecting with the main body.
You don’t need to go super in-depth with these studies. The main goal is to understand how the animal is built so you can later replicate it in your art!
Alright, now that you’ve made your proper studies, it’s time to start designing our fella.
In this phase, you have to focus on what you want him to be. Is it going to be a bookworm? Someone who's aggressive and goes to the gym? Whatever you have in mind, you need to consider it to integrate it with the animal.
You can either just not make any character trait and make it look cool, which is valid, but in my personal taste, when you think more deeply about the character's personality and give it depth, it makes it much more valuable than if it just seemed "cool."
For my example, I’ll make him a young punk who’s constantly running from authority. With that in mind, I’ll give him Punk vibes to make the design interesting!
First, I went with the base. You should do a pose that can express the character's personality. In this case, I created a relaxed pose, and above all, used the structures we previously studied in our studies.
Then I did the lineart. Since I noticed in my studies that a lot of spiky forms were used, I transferred that into the design, using a lot of pointed forms in all the character. This way I could make sure that the shape was emphasized throughout the character and that I could describe a little of the character's personality. You can do that too! By emphasizing shapes you've observed in your studies and then using them in your character. This gives your art personality, making it more dynamic and less flat.
Lastly, I did the coloring. I used saturated greens and blues to make it visually appealing and to try to make it stand out. You could either experiment trying to combine colors of the color wheel and see what’s best for you, or you can use some color palettes that the internet can generate! (I personally recommend Pinterest or Coolors.co)
And we’re done!
I want to really emphasize that you can exaggerate all you want in your art. There’s no limit to that at all! You could make a character that has almost all human features except the face, to go full animal and have minimal human characteristics.
It all lays down into the studies and PRACTICE (this one is important lol) that you make that will make it possible to do your characters that you have in mind!
Thanks for reading!