Me: Sees morbidly obese gerbil in pet shop
Also me:"yes"
My characters come from animal muses more often than not. I have a wide collection of vintage animal pelts (I never kill animals for their hides, no worries), jarred wet specimens, and skulls which serve as my references and inspirations. I also have a tendency to just straight up adopt an animal if it grabs my creative attention enough. Like I'm not kidding. I once "bought" a gerbil from a nearly out-of-business pet shop because I liked the shape of his ears and wanted to use him as a reference. I say bought, but really the pet shop gave me the gerbil for free because nobody else wanted it. And I spoil those animals like royalty, you had better believe. Huge cages, premium food, freshly prepared fruits and veggies, tons of toys, hand-sewn blankets and hammocks, pet insurance and microchips, organic paw balms, you name it.
My animals are important to me because they give me so much creative drive. All I have to do is look at them and boom character design or plot idea. Then I go draw. It is a rather weird mechanic that I haven't heard of other artists using, but it works well for me. And because I live with the animals, I get to observe their mannerisms, fur direction, scale patterns, etc. and incorporate them into my characters. Even my human characters benefit from this, because watching the animals helps me develop individual personality traits, etc.
Plus there's the added bonus that the animals get a home. My most recent addition is a senior cat with cross-eyes and half a tail. She was an owner surrender and had some sort of ovarian tumors that had to be removed. But she's hella charming, right?
I looked at her nose and fur direction a whole lot as references in some of my more recent works. And her nubbin of a tail is a good reference for my short-tailed boy, Norman.
Probably the most notable examples of me using animals/animal parts for character development are my skulled Reptillian characters. Erethizon here was modeled after a damaged juvenile raccoon skull I actually picked up at an auction of an abandoned home veterinary practice (where I live the skulls must either be thrown away or given away, they cannot be sold in the auction). The place was hella creepy. Lots of skulls and jarred critters.
And Big Daddy Reptillian was modeled off of a deer skull I picked up at another auction.
The fur of my sweet arctic fox boy, Skylar, and actually modeled off of both a rabbit pelt and some genuine fox tails I've collected.
I hate to see animals die, I really do. But I also don't like seeing deceased animals go to waste. That's why I try to collect what I can (most of my skulls, furs, and wet specimens are acquired for free and were about to be thrown away) so that I can use them for the purpose of art and education. I think it is a nice way to pay respect to the animal. I give each one a name and a nice spot on a shelf and treat them very gently and respectfully.
Anyway that's how my characters come to be. I know it's definitely weird but whatever, it works haha.