Hello everyone! Today I want to explain how to create a fursona. What is a fursona you ask? Well it’s an anthropomorphic (a fancy word for ‘has human features’) animal, that represents you. The ‘fur’ part meaning well, it’s an animal, the ‘sona’ part meaning character that represents you. So put simply an animal character that represents you.
There are artists who make a lucrative, full-time career by designing and making fursonas and fursuits or costumes for other people. Especially people who attend furry conventions.
Furry
The term fursona connects to the furry fandom. A furry is an anthropomorphic animal, and a fandom is a community of people who are a fan of something. The furry fandom, like all fandoms does have a bad or mean element to it, however the bad part is very small from what I have heard. Most of the people in the furry fandom are nice, and just want to express their creativity by creating and dressing as their fursona.
Species
The first thing you have to do in terms of making a fursona is decide on a species. Will your fursona be a dog? A cat? A bird? A reptile? A bug? (Yes, bug fursonas exist, isn’t that cool?) It’s all up to you! There is no wrong answer for what species your fursona can be. Animals that aren’t mammals can be fursonas too, and there are terms for specific ones. “Avian” is the term for birds, while “Scalie” is the term for reptiles. “Invertebrate” is the term for bugs. Some people prefer the specific terms while some just use the normal furry and fursona terms. If you have trouble deciding between two or more species for your sona, you can have them be a hybrid, or make up a species that your sona could be. A species you make is called an original species.
Look
When making a fursona, they don’t have to be a furry/avian/scalie version of you directly. They can if you want them to be, but that’s not necessary. They can be different. For example if you have brown hair, your sona doesn’t have to have brown fur, feathers, or scales. They can look however you want. Your fursona design can have patterns like a calico cat style, or tiger stripes. You can even have mythical or extinct creatures as your sona.
Colors
In terms of colors, you can pick colors that are your favorite, colors that you think fit your personality, or the planned personality of your sona. The colors don’t have to be colors that would occur naturally in the species you decided on. Go wild. You can also look up color palettes based on your interests or a particular theme and see if they strike your fancy.
Outfit
Your fursona can have an entire outfit like a hoodie and jeans or a tuxedo, or it can have just some accessories like a scarf, or glasses. There are many possibilities.
Name
Naming your fursona can be tricky sometimes. You don’t have to use your real name for your sona. You could ask a family member or friend for name ideas, or go to a baby naming site to look for potential names. You could also look up words in other languages and see if any of them strike your fancy.
Gender
In terms of the gender of your fursona, it doesn’t have to be the same gender as you. Such as if you identify as something else, you could have your fursona reflect that. Or you could have your fursona as another gender just because you want to.
Personal Connection
My suggestion is that you should mix in aspects from yourself in terms of designing your fursona. Whether it be in terms of personality aspects, how your fursona talks, appearance, or something else, you want to have an aspect of your fursona that connects to you, so you don’t loose attachment to the sona.
Copyright
NEVER copy someone else’s fursona. You don’t want to use a copyrighted species such as Pokémon or a Wookie either. Copying someone’s fursona is like plagiarism. Don’t do it. You could get in big trouble. HOWEVER you can take inspiration from them and create your own.
Example
Here’s an example on how some of these tips could be put to use. Say you wanted a sona that’s a deer, and you love retro video game sort of things. Look up retro video game palettes, and see if there’s any you like. Once you’ve found a palette that you like, use the colors for your sona. If you’ve found multiple palettes that you like, try to use your favorite colors out of those palettes. You could even grab an image from a video game, and grab the colors to import into Procreate, Ibis Paint X, or whatever drawing program you use. For the purpose of the example I grabbed the colors from a game screenshot. Grabbing colors from a screenshot or picture is perfectly okay, especially if the screenshot/picture inspired you. For name, if you wanted to still stick with the retro theme, look up retro names, or names from video games, just make sure the names themselves aren’t copyrighted. A good name like Lara, which has been seen in video games (Lara Croft) yet the first name itself isn’t copyrighted, could work nice. In terms of outfit you could base the sona’s outfit off of things you like to wear, or have them go with the sona’s theme. You don’t have to do a full outfit unless you want to. You could do just an accessory or a few accessories. I’m just doing a scarf, for this example. Since Lara is a female name, the fursona for this example will be a doe (a female deer).
Here she is, Lara the doe. She’s kind of simple but that’s perfectly okay.
Ideas
You can ask for suggestions from other people if you’re stumped for ideas. Remember as you get older you might get less attached to your fursona and decide to make a new one. That is a completely normal thing. It’s okay if you have more than one fursona, or switch around and make old sonas just OCs (OCs are Original Characters). There is no rule saying you have to have only one. It can sometimes take a while to make a fursona that you stick with, and that’s okay.
Good Mistakes
When drawing concepts for your sona, mistakes can be good. For example, if you accidentally draw a sona concept with something different than your previous drawings and like it, I’d consider that an unintentional win.
There you have it, some tips for making a fursona! I’ll ‘see’ you in our virtual art world again soon.