The appeal of anthros vs ferals vs humanoids

i always really. really. REALLY disliked anthro and feral ocs. they were always weird to me, even before the whole nsfw furries shoving their shitty porn down my 11-year old throat thing. 

Humanoid ocs just seem more... natural? like yeah they are sentient thats just how it feels like it should be. 

only time i make exceptions for non-humanoid ocs is when theyre not techically anthro or feral because if we are being honest anthros and ferals are super boring to me. like,,, its an animal with sentience, wow, u rly got me there dshkfsl (Esp bc most make their furry ocs wacky crazy colors to make them unique or stand out.... like ooooof not my thing)

also this will make me sound like a snob but the closest i will get to touching anthros and ferals are if theyre a cs and dont look like what they are if that makes sense? 

overall i just prefer humanoid for an assload of reasons, mainly because i feel humanoid designs are more original

I stick with humanoid creatures mostly, but have dabbled with ferals on a few accounts. I used to have a few anthro ocs, but they are less and less, for me now. Though I can understand the appeal still. I still have a few anthros tho, but I'm not really comfortable with their designs yet, so maybe they will change anyway. I definitely prefer humanoids

I started with ferals (I was a warrior cats kid for sure) and I still find some of them interesting. However, it is harder for me to find ones that I am connected with. Nowadays I tend to pass them up except in a few special cases. Cats especially hold a special place in my heart, plus I like some realistic cat designs because genetics are fun and interesting. I also like ferals by my favorite designers. Other than that, though, I tend to prefer humanoids.

After I learned to draw humans, I began having a great time of it and have been making more humanoid characters. I personally find most completely human ocs boring, so I enjoy adding magic and fantasy and animal bits to my humanoid ocs. Plus I find more humanoid closed species to be easier for me to connect with and do things with.

I also like anthros for a similar reason. However, I just like more human characters a little more than more animal. I still enjoy them though!

Basically, I like all of them but I like humanoids a bit more.

Back when I was 18 and discovered adoptables, I figured that anthros were the way to go. They're far more varied in design than any humanoid, but there's more of a suspension of disbelief with anthros than ferals, since we know how an anthro would move.

However, nowadays at 21, I realize that I have no story ideas that are feasible for an anthro character. There just wouldn't be any reason for them to be an anthropomorphized animal except for me wanting them to be one, if that makes sense. So I steer far into humanoid characters now, since I can actually draw and write about those, along with some feral designs.

so for me, i was really really into anthros as a kid. like i used to only play anthro video games, or watch disney movies with talking ferals/anthros because i just loved the characters so much and i loved how unique and cute they were. when i was like 12 i ended up befriending a lot of older furries, (they were like high schoolers, 16-17 at most) and my current gf that had an anthro based world that she happily let me become apart of in RP. they were super sweet to me and got me involved with art and character creation. this of course led me to be really really biased to anthros even though it's been like 14 years later. i'm currently 20 and all i wanna do is make more anthros or cool ideas that usually involve anthropomorphic characters. currently really thinking about getting into fursuiting my passion for them is so strong. they're like 100% my bias.

however i REALLY REALLY want to get passionate about feral characters? i love the idea of them. i've always loved the idea of a humanoid-thinking feral, but for me i can never seem to make or see a design i click with. i wonder if that's the world i've built is just too rigged against them?? the only feral i ever made is when i was about 14 and she used to actually be my main rp character. loved her to bits, but lost her feral vibes and ended up turning her anthro somewhere down the line. i kinda regret it lmao.

i also really like humanoid characters and kinda had the utmost bias for them from about 2016-2018. in late 2018 i was just full on just "i love these upright walkin talkin dogs what the hell" and went gung-ho on the anthro train. i don't click to humanoids as much anymore, unless they're ELVES then i just. melt. i'm so biased to elves that it almost rivals my anthro bias, lmao.

tl;dr: child grows up around furries and now hordes anthro characters like a possum sits on a garbage pile.

i prefer ferals. i don't see the appeal of humanoid characters at all. i see humans every day, everywhere, all the time. so many movies, shows, comics, all have human characters because they're easy to relate to and i personally think it's really boring. which ties into the fact that i really don't see the appeal anthros have either-- i don't think they look good? most animals look way better on four legs than they do on two? some of them can be cute but they don't... feel... right. i feel like i can express myself better with feral characters, with their anatomy, designs, colors. with their structure and how massively different they actually are vs how humans interpret them, and i hate drawing humanoids more than anything, i only do art as a personal hobby & am not striving to professionally so as far as i'm concerned i have no reason to learn how to draw them anyway since i vastly prefer ferals.

I prefer humanoids because I don't know how to draw animals :'D

No but really, I honestly have no real preference! I tend toward humanoid characters because, like I said, I can actually draw them, and in general they have more utility for me, but I do have my fair share of anthros as well! I don't tend to use them as much because they aren't as conducive to the settings I have, but that's no fault of theirs.

Ferals are something that I used to have a lot of trouble getting my head around, and I still don't really have any because... again I can't draw animals to save my life, and it's difficult to figure out how to work them into things because I love dressing chars up and such, and it feels silly to put a dress on a tiger, but seriously no shade to them!

Interestingly it's only after I started hanging around the adoptable community that I started seeing more interest in ferals, even if they still aren't entirely my cup of tea. I was tangentially aware of the anthro community for years before (I hate to say it, but literally before some people here were born), but there used to be even greater of a stigma around them than there is now, so I kind of avoided it, even if there were some anthro chars I found appealing.

In conclusion though really, I would not say that one type is "better" than the other; they're just different.

I've gone through phases with every type of character, but I consistently prefer anthros over the rest. I actually started with ferals, and similar to other people on this thread it was because I read warrior cats and made my own characters for it. As time went on though, I learned about fursonas and non-fandom characters as well, and it's all been downhill from there. As for humanoid characters, I wasn't really exposed to them on the sites I visited, so it took me a lot longer to get into them. Even still, I've never been able to connect to the concept long-term and all my humanoid ocs only last a few months at most. 

To go further into why I prefer anthros, I find them more interesting to draw than humanoids--with all of the unique species options and ways I can mess with anatomy. And I think they're easier to develop than ferals, since I have a hard time connecting to the idea of dogs with human-like personalities. Basically, I feel like I get the best of both worlds with a character that feels human in personality, without actually being a human. To make it clear though, I think all categories have their perks, and it really boils down to personal preference (:

I used to be strictly feral, but I went through a short anthro phase, and then transitioned into humans. I honestly love the variety in designs I see with feral and anthro characters, but I get frustrated drawing them. When I draw humanoids they do usually have some sort of anthro influence though! I love characters with digitigrade legs and other inhuman elements.

I used to have no particular preference, as whatever I played was strongly rooted in character-driven narrative so it mattered little to me whether they were human or otherwise. Over time I've definitely distanced myself from feral characters, if only because I find them limiting. I keep letting logistics get in my way and so nowadays my feral characters are more like pets or familiars for my actual focus ocs. I now play mainly humanoid characters with the exception of my Vastrians which are anthropomorphic draconids.

Pros and cons of humanoids - I feel like I have more freedom and less freedom at the same time here. With humans based in reality for instance, I need to consider geography, religion, society, etc that I'm not particularly nuanced on. I prefer fantasy settings but then there I run into the fundamental laws of whatever world their kind are based in. So if I'm playing an elf I have to think 'what KIND of elf?' 'what sort of pre-existing lore do I need to borrow from or commit to?'. If I'm playing a character from another country I have to think about how all of that influences a person. There's more...homework. I'm reinventing the wheel. I keep thinking up humanoids that have already been thought up in pre-existing worlds. There's a sort of pressure to make sure I have knowledge to back up their reason for being, muster up some kind of substitute for experiences I don't have. This pressure only comes up for me when making humanoids because I suppose that as a humanoid, I understand that we are very, very complex and my characters feel like overly simplistic characatures by comparison.

Meanwhile with my Vastrians they're an alien species I made up very loosely based on dragons. As long as my rules make sense, they work. I can work with the knowledge I already have and I only need to do research on special occasions. Not to mention, I find anthros way cuter than humanoids. xD Aesthetics sort of play into it. (They're also easier to draw--whoops)

I love all 3 but I find lately that human faces are easier to draw than muzzles and it's as simple as that.

Though my personal preference would be Anthro > Human > Feral

Mostly because I find Feral creatures to be kinda limiting in the amount of poses they can make. The skeleton can only move so far. And humans kinda ....idk. I always prefer more fantasy things.