# On "unique" characters (or: Interesting Fursonas/OC's Without Looking Like You're Trying Too Hard)



## TheRealKingKoopa (Mar 17, 2017)

I've seen a few people, on a few different websites, say that they're worried their fursona isn't unique or distinctive or interesting enough. Invariably the responses are "don't pile on details, that's how sparkledogs happen, focus on personality" – but I want to give a slightly more in-depth, slightly more comprehensive answer to anybody who has concerns about how interesting their OC's are. So, welcome to *How to Make Interesting and Unique Furry Characters Without Looking Like You're Trying Too Hard*!

...Or something to that effect. It's a clumsy title, but it's communicative.

*A quick primer.*

These are guidelines. Suggestions. They're not rules. I'm not telling you that you _shouldn't_ create a fox/wolf/GSD/husky as your fursona, I'm just saying that exploring other options might help make it better. I'm willing to bet that someone skilled enough can break all of these guidelines and still create an awesome character. It's just something to think about when you're creating your characters.

*Try a slightly unusual species.*

Unusual in this case meaning underrepresented in the furry fandom – lord knows there are enough snow leopards in furry art despite their real-life rarity. You could even just have an underrepresented subspecies of something common in the fandom – cougars and panthers are reasonably popular, but the latest image of a Florida panther on FA at the time of writing is from 2013. If somebody appeared with a Florida panther fursona, it would definitely pique my interest.

*Instead of giving them a unique combination of traits, make the individual traits unique.*

Let's make a fairly stereotypical fursona: a gay arctic fox with some sort of abstract rainbow markings, heterochromia, wings, and the ability to shapeshift. I doubt anyone has made a character to that exact description, but I've seen all of those individual things a ton on other characters (although maybe not the shapeshifting one; it's less common, but I just have a thing for shapeshifters). Instead of shapeshifting, maybe this guy can have a magic glove that can summon some ancient spirit that takes on the form of a number of different feral animals. It's tangentially related but also something I've never seen before. And we'll ditch the heterochromia and wings (more on that later) and instead, maybe he can have markings that change color depending on his mood. It's corny as fuck and I personally wouldn't include it in any OC I would take seriously, but I don't see color-changing characters all that much, and it's at least better than rainbows.

That's enough, I think. Any more and we start venturing into sparkledog territory. And see what we've done? We have two major, defining traits – _two!_ – one visual, in the form of the color-changing markings, and one conceptual, in the form of the spirit-summoning glove – and that's as much stuff as we can safely cram into this guy. He can still be gay and he can still be an arctic fox, but those are less important traits; you can change them without affecting the stuff that makes him stand out.

*Don't make the extraordinary mundane.*

I've found the most egregious offenders of this to be in the Sonic fandom. Tails' primary visual trait is that he has two tails, and I will strangle somebody if I see one more fox OC in a Sonic fanfiction who inexplicably has two tails as well and no one seems to think much of it. Or the thankfully-small handful of OC's I've seen whose description includes “super speed, super strength, chaos control, immortal, can fly, pyrokinesis, telekinesis...” like _motherfucker you have just taken every extraordinary trait from almost every canon character and stuffed them into one character AND NOW THEY'RE ALL BORING._

I may have gotten a little carried away there. But my point still stands that if you treat these exceptional things like they're no big deal, they stop being interesting. I see this manifest in the furry fandom pretty often in the form of heterochromia and wings – the two things that we took off of the character we just created. In reality, complete heterochromia is extremely rare and should be treated as such – although “sectoral” heterochromia is slightly less rare and can look really fucking cool and I wish more people knew about it. And as for wings, well, that's a defining trait of birds, bats, dragons, and a number of other species. If you put wings on a fox with no explanation, it just kinda leaves me thinking, _why?_ If the guy wanted his fursona to be able to fly that badly, why not make him a bird or a bat or a dragon or something to that effect? If the wings are just to look badass I can respect that, but it should at least be treated as being a really integral part of the character's design, not just “oh yeah, and he has wings as well.”

*So what about everything else?* After all, I never touched upon personality or backstory or any of that. Well... just do it as if you're making a human character, and there's far more stuff on the internet about that, written by people who are far better writers than I am; in which case, here's a good jumping-off point for that, if you're still in the mood for reading walls of text. I'm just talking about things that specifically pertain to the furry fandom.

*To summarize:*

Having an underrepresented species is a quick & easy way to stand out.
A unique color scheme, wings, heterochromia, etc. are NOT good ways to bring about uniqueness – rather, base your character off of very few, very interesting traits.
If your character has something extraordinary about them, make sure to treat it as such, otherwise it just becomes kinda pointless.
Personality- and backstory-wise, with a few exceptions, your character will be indistinguishable from a human.

---

Whew. That got kinda long. I hope somebody actually made it through all of that.


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## Simo (Mar 17, 2017)

I'm Simo the Skunk, just a little 'ol black and white striped fella, and I endorse the above message!

I like the idea of a slightly unusual species, or a species that might be usual in the wild, but unusual in terms of fursonas: Skunks are very common, but I have seen next to zero, here, as with even raccoons and weasels, or most smaller woodland critters.

Also, I like certain exotic species, the Fossa is my alternate fursona...

Myself, I have always stuck to a basic animal, typical markings, and let the personality/backstory, and maybe the clothes (if any), do the heavy lifting, to make things stand out.


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## Renven (Mar 17, 2017)

except for the very last part about the color scheme, my friend's 'sona that i wrote for him fits that pretty well. he just kinda went all in on the looks (BTW i follow that guide because i like to have a frame of reference). docs.google.com: Magnis


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## -Praydeth- (Mar 17, 2017)

(still waiting on it to be finished drawing)

But I created a story first then the fursona. But then I looked into native american mythology & found how coyotes were depicted over all these different stories. I saw lots of similarities between the depiction of coyotes in their mythology & my personality. So I decided ill be a coyote & ill have him merged with my character I created a short story for.


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## Casey Fluffbat (Mar 18, 2017)

I do like a good unusual species of fursona. I sometimes find things I didn't know existed.


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## nerdbat (Mar 18, 2017)

In general, just reading a couple of books or courses on good character design, as well as dig around some artists who primarly specialize at designing characters (JKN159 is my personal pick, crapton of inventive stuff in her fantasy girls gallery). Some stuff I can agree with OP, some I disagree, but in reality, there's tons of info on making interesting and unique characters you can find on the Internet.


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## Kipekee Reddington (Mar 18, 2017)

Good post! It deserves a sticky if you ask me.

I've been having this exact problem with my main sona lately. She's good for the most part, I put lots of thought into her concept & design, but she needs one more thing to stand out more that matches her personality.

I made a thread of it on here, you sound like you could be of some good help 

Once again, great post!


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## Cloudyhue (Apr 28, 2017)

Great post! This had some great information in it. 

My fursona is a bat/shark hybrid. I picked this bizarre combination first because it looks badass and second to be unique. I don't think there are any of those out there. If there are, I'd love to see them.

Seeing all these canines gets really boring. I stare at the next generic gray wolf and sigh. If that's what makes the owner happy, than that's perfectly fine. I just prefer something more exotic.


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## Sergei Sóhomo (Apr 28, 2017)

Be a bird. Birds are pretty alright


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## Cloudyhue (Apr 28, 2017)

Sergei Sóhomo said:


> Be a bird. Birds are pretty alright


The fandom needs more birbs.


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## Deleted member 82554 (Apr 28, 2017)

Sergei Sóhomo said:


> Be a bird. Birds are pretty alright


Birds are lunch to me, sometimes breakfast and dinner too. In fact, I'm eating bird right now!


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## ChapterAquila92 (Apr 28, 2017)

Nano-aug posthuman with mechanical prostheses. Default draconic appearance and bioforming capability are the result of the nanotech's initial analysis of my psyche.


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## FluffyShutterbug (Apr 28, 2017)

My sona has a combination of common and unique traits. She's a herm vixen who's a shy and ditzy photographer. But, she's a massive flirt when she's around people who she trusts. Want to analyze that?


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## AnarchyLynx (Apr 28, 2017)

I did agonise a bit over whether I should choose a more underrepresented species (toyed with jaguar, puma, Andean mountain cat, smilodon fatalis and a few non-feline options) but in the end decided lynx was the one I feel the most connection to. Visually my ideas are essentially just a generic anthro lynx, about 6' tall with light brown fur, silvery highlights and typical markings (not actually got a picture yet - hence the boring avatar - but that's what I'm thinking of) but I did try to focus on creating what I felt was a distinctive personality and backstory. His full name is Loxred but that's almost always shortened to Loxy or Lox. I won't go through his whole backstory but the short of it is he's an anarchist revolutionary/rebel, now slightly disillusioned and living in exile after a civil war in his home country (don't worry it's mainly just a character trait not a political statement).  Itried to give him some genuine character flaws to avoid him turning into a Mary Sue type, so to that end while he's idealistic and has fundamentally good intentions, he's impulsive and overconfident in his beliefs and abilities, which leads to him making rash decisions without thought of the consequences. He's also thin-skinned and has trouble balancing his emotions, not helped by his increasing drinking habit and his particular line of work.


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## Royn (Apr 28, 2017)

Im.... Me.  Majestys writing has good iron.


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## TheRealKingKoopa (Apr 28, 2017)

Cloudyhue said:


> My fursona is a bat/shark hybrid. I picked this bizarre combination first because it looks badass and second to be unique.


Hybrid species are also a good way uniqueness, although they're a little difficult to perfect. And someone who's really feeling ballsy can create a species from scratch (damn, I found a really good tutorial on this a while back but I've lost it, I'll have to see if I can dig it up and share it here)!

Bat/shark is definitely a little on the esoteric and out-there side, although far from the most absurd I've seen... that being said, it'd also be cool to see more real-life hybrids like ligers represented.


ChapterAquila92 said:


> Nano-aug posthuman with mechanical prostheses. Default draconic appearance and bioforming capability are the result of the nanotech's initial analysis of my psyche.


Hmm, I smell worldbuilding. 



FluffyShutterbug said:


> My sona has a combination of common and unique traits. She's a herm vixen who's a shy and ditzy photographer. But, she's a massive flirt when she's around people who she trusts. Want to analyze that?


It's a good baseline. Granted, I'm writing this from the perspective of someone who takes fursona creation as seriously as creating the main character for a book, and I get that a lot of people just want their sona to be some character who they can identify with. And I'm gonna be honest, most of the detailed stuff I come up with doesn't become relevant unless I write something or draw something involving them.

That wasn't really an answer though, was it? :I

But yeah, the right basics are there if you want to expand her character into something more complex. A hobby and one or two personality traits are good things to base a character around.



AnarchyLynx said:


> Visually my ideas are essentially just a generic anthro lynx, about 6' tall with light brown fur, silvery highlights and typical markings


Real talk: Natural fur color never gets old, and I always go in that direction with my character designs (well, usually -- but the reason for my avatar's bright colors is an actual technical reason that requires a little bit of context to get). IMO, weird/bright fur colors (provided they don't have a reason, as I just mentioned) are becoming played out, but natural colors always work. And it wouldn't hurt to give him something visually distinctive, even if it's just an accessory or something, but hey, it's your character.


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## Rant (Apr 28, 2017)

You just revealed something about me even I didn't know, I have sectoral!? What?! But yeah my eyess are brown with a ring of yellow/amber? So thats cool thanks dude.


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## ChapterAquila92 (Apr 29, 2017)

TheRealKingKoopa said:


> Hmm, I smell worldbuilding.


No surprise then that it's part of a literary project that I've been writing and revising since before I encountered the furry fandom: a near-future military sci-fi in which sufficiently advanced alien nanotech is introduced to humanity by way of escaped test subjects, and one of the unintended effects of this nanotech is what's referred to in-setting as "theri-sync" (short-hand for "therio-synchronization") - they effectively became anthros in the physical sense (they're still genetically human), with their individual species determined by physical and psychological traits among other things.


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## AnarchyLynx (Apr 29, 2017)

TheRealKingKoopa said:


> Real talk: Natural fur color never gets old, and I always go in that direction with my character designs (well, usually -- but the reason for my avatar's bright colors is an actual technical reason that requires a little bit of context to get). IMO, weird/bright fur colors (provided they don't have a reason, as I just mentioned) are becoming played out, but natural colors always work. And it wouldn't hurt to give him something visually distinctive, even if it's just an accessory or something, but hey, it's your character.



Well I gave him a bitchin' leather jacket, does that count?  The problem I have is that I don't imagine him being in a particularly fantasy/sci-fi world, so physically I imagine him looking pretty normal, maybe some prominent battles scars but that's not exactly 'unique' (some kind of near-future semi-apocalypse might be fun though, could maybe give him a robot arm or something ). Maybe it doesn't help that I'm not at all good at art, so the aesthetics take a bit of a backseat to the character since anything I did with him would be written most likely. I'm open to ideas though!


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## Mandragoras (Apr 29, 2017)

Mine's just me as a marten, with a little scar on my face in the same place I have one in real life and glasses so I can actually see past my arm-span. I haven't settled on a formal eye colour because I actually *do* have central heterochromia (blue/hazel-green) and I'm not sure that would translate well in an animal whose default eye colour is dark brown. But I don't have much interest in making my fursona "unique" so much as reflective of who I am and what suits me aesthetically, which hopefully stands out without being ostentatious on its own merits.

And I think maybe that's the key? Be what you love. If who you are shines through, the rest is window dressing.


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## AnarchyLynx (Apr 29, 2017)

Shane McNair said:


> Oh yeah, and he's also straight as an arrow and likes women!



Interesting fact about arrows, they get surprisingly bendy when they're flying through the air 

I think like the sound of your 'sona, although I'm unclear what kind of personality he is...I'm getting a kind of flying James Bond figure but are we talking Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig?


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## TheRealKingKoopa (Apr 29, 2017)

Shane McNair said:


> Right, so let's see if I can organize a coherent response from the jumbled mess of random and incomplete thoughts that clutters my head, just to add my own $0.02.
> 
> People focus too much on superficial things like the looks of their character, or the species. Frankly, I really don't care about bizarre physical traits or unusual markings, or things like wings. I definitely don't care for nonsensical, unnatural looking colors and shit like that. They are attention grabbing, but not in a good way. In most cases these things just come off as a cry for attention or a display of lacking imagination. They make the character unappealing, ridiculous, and cliche. I'm not even necessarily greatly interested in things like a muscled physique or battle scars or a curvy, busty feminine figure (although I do generally appreciate it, lol). But how about what a character DOES? What about his/her story? What about a character's PERSONALITY and their motives? What about character archetypes? Are they a hero, villain, coward, temptress, ???? Aren't these things infinitely more interesting?
> 
> ...


I pretty much agree with all of this, but there's something that I think is worth mentioning: Form-from-function and function-from-form are both good ways to build a character. The characters you mentioned work in the former way -- the world and their places in it determine what the bulk of their design is going to look like, and then you make an eye-catching design and interesting character within those constraints. Meanwhile I've mostly been talking about the opposite: taking a really cool character and then justifying their existence by building a world and their background around that design & concept. I generally do the latter if I have something in mind that I absolutely want to make (and I have built D&D characters solely based around pictures before), and the former if I just need to make a character that'll fit a role.


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## Cloudyhue (Apr 29, 2017)

TheRealKingKoopa said:


> Hybrid species are also a good way uniqueness, although they're a little difficult to perfect. And someone who's really feeling ballsy can create a species from scratch (damn, I found a really good tutorial on this a while back but I've lost it, I'll have to see if I can dig it up and share it here)!
> 
> Bat/shark is definitely a little on the esoteric and out-there side, although far from the most absurd I've seen... that being said, it'd also be cool to see more real-life hybrids.


When most people see my fursona they're always asking "what the heck is that?" I probably should've designed her better or something so that that doesn't happen but she looks awesome as she is.


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## ChapterAquila92 (Apr 30, 2017)

One of the key points that I remember being brought up at a rather intuitive character creation panel during VancouFur 2016 was that no good character exists in a void. You can make your character as 'cool' as you want them to be, but simply 'being something' doesn't make a character believable - they have to interact with others in order to be believable. For that matter, character creation really requires you to create two characters if you're doing this from scratch - one is the intended character, whether that be a fursona or an OC, and the other is the universe they live in.

I gave a pretty simplistic summary of what my fursona actually was earlier, and suffice to say that it is very dependent on the setting. As a military man myself, my fursona will always be of a martial archetype. If it's not as a professional soldier however, it'll typically be as a stoker (naval engineer) or artificer, reflecting on my inclination towards science and engineering. Barring any shenanigans involving interdimensional travel, which is well beyond my fursona's capabilities, the setting determines what kind of prosthetics he has access to (if not going cyclopean Lord Nelson), whether he started off human or was born an anthro bronze dragon, and whether or not he has the ability to create and manipulate life like a D&D druid or the teched-up genetic engineer he is by default. Beyond that, his behaviour is my own.

Alas, for all my love of role-play, I'd rather be rolling up a new character for a D&D campaign as opposed to doing a self-insert.


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## ChapterAquila92 (May 21, 2017)

On a tangential note, I recently started a related (albeit niched) thread about shapeshifting characters - more specifically, whether or not a fursona might benefit from being a shapeshifter and how it might be implemented.


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## Jin-Lust-4-Sin (May 22, 2017)

A _minotaur_ with a snake for his tail and a freakin' kangaroo-like pouch on his belly. Nobody can _beef_ with me now.


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## It'sBlitz (May 23, 2017)

I especially agree on the part about giving any species wings all willy nilly, when they never should have any! Thank you for that. it really gets to me for some reason...


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## lycheefreeze (May 27, 2017)

I was surprised to see something as soft and cute as a _chinchilla _was actually very uncommon for a sona.


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## Kayl (Jun 6, 2017)

I feel that chooseing a bat was good enough for me. No funny colors. Wings obviously belong, but they've been rendered useless. I put an emphesis on his blindness, having him wear a violet blindfold.  Dunno why people need unatural colors to stand out or every ability in the book. I think being cute to boot is good enough to draw attention


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