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

[Kura]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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)

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

the dubs would always give them the most high pitched and awful voices.

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!)

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)

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 >_<

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[fanyart]

Thanks, @tarableart ! You pointed out several interesting things. Though the "Audiences tend to attach less lasting meaning to an animal character than a human character" really hurt from the animal point of view, you're perfectly right

@kurapikasuki Thanks for voicing your opinion! Please don't feel intimidated, the more diverse opinions, the better!
Ah, another addition to my watch list! Good thing I haven't visited my friend who has Disney movies yet!
Yeah, selling plushies and stuff is another important thing about movies - like the Ice Age series they kept adding characters that had like 20 secs of screentime overall probably just to make toys. With Ice Age 4 toys arrived first into my country and I was looking forward to the elephant seal and the damans/guinea pigs/whatever they were in the movie but they just flashed before the camera for a few seconds.

I just realized something that might be funny to add - the animal mascots can attract audience themselves, even if a potential viewer/reader wouldn't be interested in the story. I remember I watched Epic purely for the two snails They weren't really mascots, more like independent characters, though.
And I can't say I wasn't amused when my friend told me "there are cat lovers all over the world, even if they don't care about dragons, Purra will attract them to look at your comic even if he's an ugly fat cat". So I'm kind of curious about that

[SethJH]

This topic might be a little old by now, but I'm glad to know I'm not the only artist out there have questioned this and felt discouraged about presenting their comic due to the immediate loss of readers on the premise that the characters are anthro animals and not human.

I was uploading the prologue to my comic on tumblr, which features Human scientists in "our" universe working on genetic experiments. I gained a few readers and everything was fine. When I started uploading the main part of the story, where it is solely anthro animal characters, I began seeing my reader count drop. Nobody said anything, they just left. It got me feeling discouraged that the story I've been really passionate about creating is falling on deaf ears. I'm well aware of the furry community and their art styles, tropes, and themes, and I've been trying to avoid that because I don't want my story catered to such a specific (and often stigmatized) "fandom". I'd prefer it be accessible to any reader who doesn't hate animals or science fiction. I'd be interested to know if there's any other comic artists who've chosen anthro animals had experienced this situation, and what was the result of it?

[scythe]

Two words: Animal Farm. 'nuff said.

[SandraMJ]

Well, probably anyone who's used anthro since the birth of the furry community, haha. It's just going to happen, I'm afraid. To give you an example, Nickelodeon didn't want to make The Legend of Korra because the protagonist was a female, and they were afraid that would be terrible for audiences. Turns out it was not, people loved Korra (some people. Then the plot got worse but that's a whole other argument) and nobody gives a damn about the people who complained about Korra being a girl.

So, if you continue, disregarding those who are afraid of seeing the same stigmas of other comics with anthro characters, you'll find people who are nice and fine with it

@scythe Welp, there weren't uhhh "the other kind" of comics with animals back then, though animal farm gets a whole different stigma as it still is mistaken for a kids book. I had the dubious pleasure of reading it when I was 7 because it was in the classroom's library. Yikes.

[guilhermecahu]

This topic is a blessing. I have an anthro character in my story and I've been thinking about public's reaction for some time.

I don't consider myself part of the furry fandom neither and I made a great effort to make my character look more animal than human (that's the kind of anthro I prefer). I can assuredly state that it took me 1 entire year to develop this character - and I'm still putting the finishing touches. One of the strongest references to its design was Shirokuma Café, in which the caracters [that aren't human] are 100% animal, no middle ground.

Altought I prefer characters that are more animal, I must say I like some on the other way too. Actually the greatest problem about this, in my opinion, is the approach. Overly sexualized anthros? NO. Ultra happy Disney-like mega colorful anthros? LOL NOPE. Kid-like overly sexualized Disney-like mega artificially colorful anthros, having sex? [deep facepalm]

Anyway, I'd like to share some references with you here to base some of my opinions. For example, starting with an illustrator I admire a lot, Jerome Jacinto. He can draw more animal-like anthros, like this one, a middle ground, and anthros with human shaped-body but with stronger animal characteristics, like his latest illustration and they're still great imo. He knows how to give an appropriate approach to them, as well as he knows his craft very well.

Another illustrator that draws animal characters is J. T. Cole. Sometimes they're more animal, sometimes they have a human-shaped body, but with strong animal characteristics. Take a look at this, this and this.

And there is a webcomic that was not mentioned here that also has human-shaped characters with strong animal traits and that has a good approach, that is Beyond the Western Deep. And guess what, Jerome will draw the next entire chapter of the comic!

Oh, about Shirokuma Café...

It's great for references!

[SandraMJ]

Ohh yeah, shirokuma café was really cool about it, though sometimes the expressions felt a bit off precisely because they were so animal like, in my opinion. Though thanks a lot for mentioning the other two artists, their art looks AWESOME!

Yeahhhhh the sexualization of characters, and especially terribly cheesy characters, among furries gives nowadays anyone who uses anthropomorphic characters a bad rep and gets you called "furry". I walk up to the mirror, yawn, look at myself, and I don't see a furball, I see a perfectly normal human, so I don't identify myself as a furry either haha. One just has to deal with the prejudice, sigh.

[zoonland]

No, they don't distract me if they aren't just a furry character. Example: Blacksad. A fantastic comic book with animals as characters, but with very serious stories.

[guilhermecahu]

By the way, here are 3 more references. These guys are really pro; I admire their work a lot and I discovered them because they illustrated for the Redwall series.

Christopher Denise. He illustrated the 3 Redwall picture books (The Redwall Cookbook, A Redwall Winter's Tale, The Great Redwall Feast) and many others. He works with pastel and charcoal. Here is his Facebook page and an interview with him. If I'm not mistaken, it was him that said that drawing anthropomorphic characters was not easy, and keeping this in mind, specially coming from Christopher Denise, made me feel less frustrated when developing my main character.

Troy Howell. Illustrated all the american covers of the Redwall books. I think he works with oil painting. Here's an interview with him and his Facebook page. One of my favorite covers is this one, from The Long Patrol (and Mariel of Redwall too, but I couldn't find a good image in which the colors weren't too saturated or overly desaturated).

David Elliot. He illustrated chapters for some Redwall books and has many other works. Here is an interview with him.

---

Extra mentions!

There are 2 other webcomics that use anthro characters well. They're Carnivore Planet, that is drawn completely in black & white, hatchings everywhere, and Roar Street Journal, that uses animals in a more cartoony way but totally delivers the message it proposes to, like in this episode. I like the artist's style a lot.