Cute furry characters: do they distract you from a serious story?

fanyart 2015-06-20 00:50:43 UTC #33

I have been thinking about this for a long time too. And I can't deny that I was quite demotivated when I found out that if I had drawn anime-like human characters instead of anthro dragons, my images would be many times more popular. Maybe that's also the reason I totally hate drawing humans....

@Marchen Whoa, that looks just like my characters! O_O Are they kangaroos? They look a bit like dragons, maybe that's why they give the same vibe as my dragons..
Though they have different tails and mine don't have ears and have a straight nose. And I really envy the artist that their characters don't have wings, they are such a pain to remember to draw! >_<

These are mine (unfinished illustrations):

(yeah, Mini is different as she has a rounder face and smaller nose)

I believe that even anthro characters can convey emotions...

... or maybe not? I don't know anymore ⊙﹏⊙ I had always thought that the relationship between those characters was depicted well and people will be able to understand them... Now the thought people won't relate to the characters scares me because the story more or less revolves around their relationship X﹏x

Note: my characters don't have any weird kind of relationship.

SandraMJ 2015-06-20 09:16:23 UTC #34

Yeah, any kind of character can definitely convey emotions! However, not everyone can relate to characters who aren't human, like @Jelw above, and so moments that would be emotive (a human Chibi seeing the other as a brother, for example) don't cause an emotive response for them, or not so strong.

Anthropomorfic dragons, in particular, get flack from some of both sides: people who like furry characters (but not scaly ones) and people who don't like anthro period. All the people who loved dragons (me included) loved your comic, though!

Upon designing characters, for anything ever, there's always going to be a side of the potential readers who's going to be sacrificed. If your characters are too old, young people may not relate. If they're too young, the other way around. I probably wouldn't have heard of Dragon Heroes if it hadn't been for a friend who loved dragons and nothing else!

fanyart 2015-06-20 15:31:41 UTC #35

@SandraMJ Yeah, I read that. It's probably hard to tell if people will feel for the characters or not.
To me it's something I can't really imagine I don't remember a time I read a comic in any style and didn't feel for the characters just because they were whatever animal or drawn in whatever style. I remember loving characters drawn even in styles I'm personally a bit allergic to...
Maybe a good storytelling can save that and bridge that gap for more people.

But heck! Nobody can do something everybody will like!

Uh, actually my dragons don't have scales, they are fluffy - they have velvet-like soft fur Though those two characters have that hair that doesn't let it show much, this guy even has a beard:

But yeah, in the old Dragon Heroes comic style I didn't really give much attention to showing that they are actually fluffy. This comic I draw is colored differently so maybe it will show.

But thanks for the note, I'll keep in mind that I have to show that they are fluffy for people to like them more!

kikubi 2015-06-20 16:59:58 UTC #36

I suppose in reality, any dramatic style choice we make with our comics will place them into a specific readership niche. For instance, my series reads from right to left. Some people think that's annoying and heinous for an English-language comic, so I knew from the beginning that I was making a choice that would limit my readership to an extent. I did it anyway because I'm more used to reading manga than western comics, and find it difficult to make my pages flow if I reverse them. But then the good thing is that being in a niche makes it easier for people who actually want to read the series to find it.

tarableart 2015-06-20 19:31:42 UTC #37

I wouldn't say they are distracting at all. Using your reference with "Lackadaisy", it has an entire cast exclusively of fairly cute anthropomorphic felines and yet the backbone of the story line is completely serious. Though there are often hi jinks and comedic points, it flows well with the gritty action of gangsters clashing and characters dodging hitmen. I think what matters most is whether the author takes their characters seriously or not- it's something that readers can tell.

Another example could be the animated film Kung Fu Panda- Sifu has all of the physical tenets of a cute character. Tiny form, huge ears, fluffy- and yet with how he is characterized and what interactions he has with the cast, no body can deny that he is definitely a serious and powerful character. Cute doesn't even enter the brain.

I personally feel that the only reason a person can give for avoiding furries in comics is that they allow society's impressions to influence them simply because the comic is labeled as "Furry". If people can enjoy and take seriously Kung Fu Panda, Disney's Robin Hood, or Jungle Book then they have no excuse as to why they can't take the Furry genre seriously.

fanyart 2015-06-20 22:12:04 UTC #38

@kikubi I find people having problems reading left-to-right or right-to-left kind of silly...

I myself realized that mangas are read from right after having read 30 forty-page chapters of a manga translated to English. I'm not joking. (It was probably mostly because I wasn't really good at English at the time so I just read it by pictures >_> )

Ever since then I had never thought about either direction being wrong or whatever. Your note made me remember a comment I saw under a translated manwha webtoon posted on a manga reader website (at that time Korean webtoons were just starting to be translated) - "aah, it looks cool but it's read from left, I don't wanna read it, I'm used to manga from right" or something like that. ... I don't want it to sound rude, but such people are... like, culturally inept, close-minded? >_<

@tarableart You wrote it great with Sifu example!
The "furry" label with its connotation is indeed annoying. I had been drawing anthro characters for years before finding out people use such characters for... that weird stuff. I even naively joined a deviantart-similar website with "furry" in title when I was in highschool only to find out that the images of all the artists there I wanted to befriend were... weird. Ugh.
I mean, I respect that they do what they like but find it hard to forgive them for the connotation they gave the furry term.
But I guess it's just similar to how "manga" has different connotation in different countries. In my country, manga=hentai (in better case, yaoi). So narrow-minded. But what can we do about that?

BTW why do the images show so horribly large? I feel like I have flooded the thread, sorry >_<

Raven_C 2015-06-20 22:36:33 UTC #39

SAME. It's all about characterization and story for me. I often don't really care whether they're animals or whatever. I've been watching Disney and Don Bluth films since I was kid, and I always enjoyed them because I could sympathize/identify with the characters and their emotions. Whether they were animals or humans, it didn't matter to me.

YO. I wholeheartedly agree. As well as your point about the author taking the characters seriously. That's all that matters to me. It's unfortunate that "furry" brings up such a bad image. Sometimes, I'm even hesitant to call my comic "furry" and just say "anthro." So I admit I'm a bit affected by what society has created with that term. Of course, that doesn't mean I avoid stories with furries (I already read a few of them anyway), it's just that sometimes I'm like..."What if people think badly of me just cuz I have a furry comic," etc. Haha.

fanyart 2015-06-21 20:37:49 UTC #40

There is one thing that came to my mind while reading this thread:

Do cute animal mascots distract you?

I mean those "accessories" that live with characters that don't really contribute to the main story but serve the purpose of lightening up the mood? Like those squirrels, chipmunks, weasels and various little fantastic animals.

I would like to know what are everybody's views on this and also if you know of a good example of such a mascot.

I have this fat cat (named Purra) that was supposed to come with another character in a sequel but I fell in love with him so I decided to put him in the main story instead (he looks even fatter now than in these images I have on me right now).

I felt some of the scenes between two main characters were a bit heavy so I used the cat to add something comical. And when there's a real serious scene, he magically disappears! ...No, he's just fat so he has trouble catching up with these characters running around

I wonder if I made the right choice and if he makes the story more enjoyable...

Kura 2015-06-21 20:59:13 UTC #41

I actually hated them a lot as a kid, I hate them in anime, Disney movies, cartoons anything they decided to throw them into.

It's not that I hate the idea of characters having animal companions or friends, it was that they took up so much pointless screen time that more often than not had nothing to do with the story (The Raccoon and that Pug in Pocahontas, I hated them so much as a kid that I wanted to slaughter them both, but everyone else I knew thought they was adorable or funny). Or, in the case of a lot of anime, they make these magical animals excessively annoying and aggravating, and the dubs would always give them the most high pitched and awful voices. It got to the point where if an anime or cartoon has a 'mascot character' I would just flat out refuse to watch it, because it was just too common for them to be used poorly in storytelling, to the point where it was jarring to have them interrupt a serious or dramatic story or scene for funny time ha ha's.

I am much less picky about them now than I was a kid, and I enjoy them when they are used properly without destroying a scene, but overall I still really do not care for them.

SandraMJ 2015-06-21 20:59:30 UTC #42

I feel that, when they don't talk, they're a cute extension of a character's personality -- that is, they talk to themselves, so, that's just as good as any talking character, but a LOT subtler! (ie. A person asking their pet what should they do about a difficult situation) And again, they're cute and make you go "d'awwwwww!" which is a great way to bond with a character. I liked Koromaru in the videogame Persona 3, for example, as that was his purpose -- he didn't do ANYTHING for the plot, but he was great for the atmosphere overall, even when all he said was "arf!" "bark" and "grrr!"

However, sometimes they are a bit too distracting. For example, the spider of your comic (Zero, right?) was a bit strange to me at first because his design was so different that I felt that, had it been another dragon character/silent pet, it may have worked better as a companion. He had the design of a pet, but the interactions of a more "serious" character.

That's my opinion at least! ^^

EDIT: @kurapikasuki is totally right though, if they get too much onscreen time, they get annoying >.<

Raven_C 2015-06-21 21:24:36 UTC #43

I didn't mind them. The one I hated from the get-go and never liked was Scrappy Doo from the Scooby Doo series. Screw that guy. lol

SandraMJ 2015-06-21 21:26:39 UTC #44

DA-DA-DA-DA-DAAAAAAA PUPPYYYYYY POWEEEEER!

I used to love him as a toddler. Then I grew up and rediscovered how terribly annoying he was.

The only good thing about the live action movie was seeing him get his comeuppance, sniff.

MylCreates 2015-06-21 21:46:42 UTC #45

Furries don't make me avoid a story, I'll still consider it. I don't go searching for it in particular either though. Good stories = good stories.

As far as cute furry creatures not being able to make a story serious...

Jelw 2015-06-22 01:38:56 UTC #46

For me the big thing with animal side-kicks is whether they talk or not. If they're just pets? Fine, but as mentioned before they can be extremely grating when given a voice. One of the reason Aladdin was my favorite disney movie growing up honestly is probably cuz the only talking animal was the parrot- and parrots talk even if not to that extent.
@sandramj Koromaru is wonderful <3

fanyart 2015-06-22 08:28:52 UTC #47

Whoa, that's some seriously harsh words I've got to watch the movie to see for myself

I have always been more into manga than anime but I remember watching an anime version of some manga where the character I more or less liked got a horrible voice... Well, to me 90% of anime is unwatchable because of voices of any kind of character.
Can you please give some more examples of those you hated if you remember? I want to see that to avoid that. (My comic is completely sketched out already but if I had done some horrible mistake, I want to change it!)

Yeah, that's also what I use Purra for - I hate soliloques and a silent animals are good for characters voicing their thoughts without looking weird
I gotta watch the movie with Koromaru, I hope he's as cute there as he's in the game (I don't play games but found out there was a movie).

Thanks for the feedback on Zeero. I myself probably didn't know what to do with him - first he was just an accessory to show that Mirrage is a hobo but then he came alive and became somewhat of a mentor to Mirrage to make up for what he was lacking to survive ...Man, I really haven't thought about these characters for years, I almost forgot what it was about >_<

That. Was. Weird.
Maybe the fishes might have worked or the turtles... I honestly don't know if I should laugh or cry >_<
(I didn't know Pikachu could talk)

But at the same time, watching the video without seeing the whole episode/movie and being attached to the characters is a totally different experience, I believe it worked for long-time viewers.
It's the same as discovering a new comic and first landing on a page where someone is bawling their eyes out. You first think "What the hell, such stupid drama" but if you read from the beginning and start to feel for the characters, the experience of reading that page would be different.
This is an issue with webcomics in particular because people get to read like a page per week and when there is a serious sequence going on, people reading it page/week would find it disconnected and hard to feel for than the readers coming in late and reading it all at once.
...Yeah, another thing is when a comic has a very active fanbase that keeps commenting things like "don't make her cry!" and often make the whole scene more dramatic than it was meant to be

@Jelw Yeah, when they talk they more or less become a separate character that needs to be handled more carefully than an "accessory character".

Kura 2015-06-22 13:24:37 UTC #48

I think the biggest thing to just keep in mind is "Are the actions of this character going to distract and possibly derail the viewer from the story, or will it HELP tell the story or improve the scene." When adding these characters into a story or scene, you want them to be useful accessories to the storytelling process (not the character, the storytelling process), all characters in a story, mascot animals or not, are storytellers that should be there to be a part of the story, or help tell the story. If you are stopping the story and panning off to 'cute irrelevant side misadventures' of the mascot character that have no real effect on the story, slow the story down, or distract you from the story. Then you have a problem. For the Pocahontas (since I mentioned it before) The animal companions were very much distractions that would constantly rip you out of the main story to give you a funny ha ha scene. While on the other hand, if you take a movie like Mulan, the mascot characters heavily contributed to the story, even when they had their mascot only scenes they directly contributed to events in the story or helped the story move along. They were comical and more cartoonish than the Pocahontas mascots, yet at the same time they were not interrupting or slowing down the story like the raccoon and pug in Pocahontas. They were not cute comical distractions they were cute comical characters.

It's a basic storytelling element that for whatever reason a good amount of writers seem to think animal mascots override. If the scene or character do not contribute to the story or characters in anyway, then what is the reason for having included it in the story? This is why many people hate filler episodes. They waste people's time, they put the story on hold, they contribute nothing to the actual ongoing plot and story, the most that filler episodes are capable of doing is contributing fan-service (doesn't have to be the sexual kind, just stupid things that the fans would like to see for the sake of seeing it) and again, fan-service CAN actually be written into a story or be part of a story (just like animal mascots can), but most productions either just choose not to, or can't because they're working with a source material that originally did not have these filler side stories.

fanyart 2015-06-22 17:36:02 UTC #49

Thanks for the examples and explanation of them! Hm... I really have to watch those movies. I haven't seen Pocahontas but Mulan was on tv when I was a kid I think. Did Mulan mascots talk too?

Maybe when it's for kids, there actually needs to be something like a breather from the main story so it wouldn't be too much at once. That's why Disney has all those songs. For older audience, that must be different.

As I said, I vastly prefer manga to anime so I don't have an opinion on filler episodes. Some people might hate them but at the same time, it's a sort of fanservice, as you said, and some people love them because they feature their loved characters, no matter what they do. That's the same with fanarts, people like them because of the characters they know and not for the art, artist or whatsoever.

I don't think that fat cat of mine distracts after all, he doesn't have any side misadventures but serves as a pillow (both literally and figuratively) and a spice to show some more of the main characters' interaction.

Well... only readers can tell

...Yeah and I found a more recent painting of Purra where he's fatter, so I'll post him just for the sake of him being cute

(sorry, this thread has already become my gallery >_<;;; )

tarableart 2015-06-22 17:55:18 UTC #50

Well, the technique of adding a breather in between climactic events is a real story-telling strategy. It's known as Catharsis. Screen-plays use it (Shakespeare used it ALL the time) to allow the audience a chance to emotionally relax in between intense emotional ups and downs. Without something like comedy or a feel-good moment then the audience will become emotionally numb and the intense moments will lose their power and effect.

Kurapikasuki brings up Meeko and Flit from Pocahontas, but to counter I will bring up Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet- after a particularly intense scene in the play the scene would suddenly divert to these particular characters. Their actions were purely for comedy sake and they did not actually affect the main storyline, but that was the entire purpose. Sometimes it is actually a good thing to divert from the storyline to allow the audience to digest and subconsciously absorb what they've been seeing. Too much information constantly will often times prevent core meanings and lessons from actually being understood due to over-saturation of information.

I think adding a cute and furry sidekick is perhaps an easy way for an author/screenplay writer to do just that. Audiences tend to attach less lasting meaning to an animal character than a human character, so cute sidekicks can often just be an extension of a human character without attaching the weight and potential story-affecting responsibility to said animal.

Kura 2015-06-22 19:07:53 UTC #51

I am quiet aware it's a story-telling strategy, just not one that I like because it is abused and overused because it's a very simple to understand concept, yet seldom done very well (again all posts are my opinion since that is what the thread is asking for, personal opinions), and one that unfortunately mascot characters are susceptible to, because usually writers can't seem to think of any other way to justify having the cute animal characters they need to sell toys of into a story.

Another good example in where the comic relief animal characters (tho these ones talked) felt like they were annoying me throughout the story and hindering the actual storytelling was the Disney interpretation of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" The gargoyle characters they decided to throw in there, because yeah, that story is very dark and pretty difficult to present to children so I don't blame them for feeling they needed to throw SOMETHING lighthearted into that. Unfortunately they did it horribly, the gargoyles were so overboard not only were they just awful characters, but they were awful to the point they were embarrassing to watch. They still are embarrassing, because now when I say "this is one of my favourite movies as a kid we should watch it" to someone that hasn't watched it yet, as soon as these three friggen characters pop onto the screen I just kind of groan and hang my head thinking "omfg my friend is going to think I have the humor level of a two year old that only finds amusement in fart jokes..." They did nothing for the movie, the story could have been told perfectly fine without them, and it wasn't as if everything else that happened outside of the gargoyle characters was dark, it still had its bright, colourful and silly moments while still telling the story, but then as soon as those three come on screen everything just got uncomfortably ridiculous.

If they would have been handled, or even presented differently they might have actually worked, but they were not. They were handle poorly, because the writing technique, though indeed a technique is often handled very poorly and used more as a writing cop-out instead of bothering to find alternate ways to deal with a heavy story or even just having a character to sell merch in a movie or series.

Edit: Only one of the animal sidekicks in Mulan spoke, the cricket and horse did not.

tarableart 2015-06-22 20:34:36 UTC #52

My explanation of Catharsis was to the thread as a whole, as some people seemed to express confusion over the idea of breaking the flow of the story with cute/funny characters and I felt a definition of the technique (or at least the English definition, as I know not everyone on Tapastic comes from Europe or the Americas) might clear some things up.

I can definitely agree with you about the gargoyles in Notre Dame. I love that movie to death, but in terms of comedic relief Djali (the goat) and the gypsies did well enough on their own. Perhaps the writers had wanted a sort of nature vs nurture element as Quasimodo would need a gentle/good role model growing up to counter the evil prejudice of being raised by Frollo? - but at the same time it was somewhat counter-intuitive as the gargoyles were just figments of his imagination anyway. The need for company in his isolation also makes sense, as humans are social creatures, so him having imaginary friends to cope likewise fits- but Disney wrote their scenes rather poorly.

Taking into account that the gargoyles ARE made from Quasi, then his asking for advice is a conversation with himself. Yet the personalities of the gargoyles clash with the audiences' perception of Quasi's character. Though I can admit that he does seem to be a romantic and studious, as at least one of the gargoyles seems to be. Personally I felt he had formed his own good opinion on humanity from being an observer anyway, so perhaps had the gargoyles been written in only one or two scenes it might have flowed better (and without Hugo...).

Outside of introspection style characters I believe a lot of writers choose to include animal characters not just from ease of writing and marketing, but perhaps because it is a pattern that is inherent to humanity. If one were to take the example of the Monomyth- the absolute core of most adventure oriented stories- the inclusion of an animal character represents the presence of Nature and its approval of the Hero. Harry Potter has Hedwig, Dorothy has Toto, Percy Jackson has Blackjack, etc. It's not exactly a checklist that people add to their stories but rather something that is almost unconscious.

On that note, I again agree with your stance Kura. Quite a few story boarders do not include said "Friendly Beast" well into their story. Certain studios (Disney among them) often do well in creating an environment that appeals to all ages, but sometimes I feel they overdo it in reaching young children.