As a fan of anthro art but not someone who considers themselves a furry I think its a pity that so many people think its all about the porn, there is plenty of neat clean anthro art out there and I thought I’d post a few examples just to show that there actually is some.
Comic strips with a lot of historical background and information:
Fun jokes that only really work with anthro characters…warning NSFW language!
This is just gorgeous, its fantasy but the artist does a lot of anthro art as well:
This is really well done:
This one is sweet, the little girl is a native of a previously uncontacted island who has been carving models of the ships sailing by. A lot of anthro artists like building their own story-worlds and races.
And just fun stuff with neat art styles:
It does tend to get overwhelmed by the sexual stuff but that isn’t all there is to it. I’m not trying to convert anyone, just to show that there is nice stuff out there.
Sure you could say that you could just use humans instead of animal-people in most of the above but personally I find anthros aesthetically pleasing in a way not seen in human based art. Though I have a lot of other art saved that isn’t anthro, in fact anthro is just a subset of what I like. I do think it has an unfair image to an extent, though unfortunately mostly self-inflicted as it does tend to have elements that go wwwwaaayyyyy off the deep-end lol and its those parts and the sexualised stuff that tends to get all the publicity.
Thanks for those links. Also thanks for introducing me to the term anthro. I clicked on this thread thinking it was going to be something related to anthropology.
I have to admit that I still don’t quite get the appeal. And even if it’s totally family-friendly, any image of an anthropomorphic animal with the body shape of an adult human female makes me uncomfortable for reasons I can’t quite unravel.
You’re welcome, and yes it covers a part of history I haven’t really seen elsewhere.
You’re welcome, and yes I understand that, if asked I couldn’t really say why I like anthro-art other than ‘it looks neat’ and I can understand why other people might feel differently.
I’ve been a furry for a damn long time, and have to say, I love the motif. It animalizes humans, and humanizes animals. It’s a way of exploring psychological archetypes. It allows you to select your own totems. I know a lot of bear fans, for instance: bears are really personal to them.
And, yeah, it’s a way to explore sexual themes, too. For instance, is a naked furry really “naked” if they’re covered in a pelt?
It’s a big enough place to have something for nearly everyone. You can have “people with animal heads,” or “animals with some human attributes,” and a whole bunch of in-between types. Everybody has their favorites!
I really miss the great black-and-white explosion in comics, from the 80s and 90s. That was the high-tide of the furry movement. There were some REMARKABLY good comic books coming out back then.
Thanks for the reply Trinopus, that makes a lot of sense! The black-and-white comics were a little before my time though. I do think the internet has provided a wonderful ease of access to art in general, not just anthro art in particular though.
Sounds like the argument a weird friend of mine made… but all he ever really looked at were naked fem-panthers. He actually went so far as to spend $2000 on a pair of dental-quality panther-like canine teeth. And then he shacked up with a runaway 17 year old boy… I lost touch with him after that.
So… I definitely agree that it’s not all sex, but there’s a lot of creeps out there working double-time to give it all a bad name.
My exposure to it is basically Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but of the era before multi-colored headbands when it was still a black and white comic. That and the Palladium RPG line based on TMNT.
Okay, yes, that’s true. Overheard at a furry party at a Westercon: “If there were really rabbits that big, I’d fuck them.” That’s not the sort of thing we want our little corner of fandom to be judged by!
On the other hand, the artistic and dramatic brilliance of the “Albedo” comic book is really wonderful. The “furry” aspect doesn’t seem to be necessary, until very late in the (unfinished!) series, where the origin of the civilization is depicted. Suddenly, the furriness becomes key.
Omaha, the Cat Dancer was also artistically beautiful and a jolly fun dramatic “soap opera.” Excellent characterization. (Lots of sex; the series was borderline porn.)
Lots and lots of others. Red Shetland was always good for a laugh.
