How to get into the CS design mindset?

I think the problem I'm having here is I'm trying to pick a feature and then justify it, rather than coming up with a situation and imagining what would evolve, magically or otherwise, in response to it. Maybe I should try that. Camphorous, I like your teapot pangolin idea, do you have any other examples you've done?

Hm.. maybe try these for some thought exercises.

Since you like the blend of animate an inanimate, how about a creature that attaches objects to itself as an adaptive behavior like a decorator crab? Come up with something that falls into the same ecological niche and has that behavior, but from a different environment, like a forest or rocky scrubland, and comes from a different evolutionary lineage, so it has a different basic body plan.

It's going to be an animal that isn't very fast, has good dexterity for manipulating objects, and is small enough to be covered by pieces of leaf litter or other debris, but big enough to easily tote them around.

Right away, that gives you information about the appendages, size, limb length, and way of movement.

It also needs to produce some kind of natural glue and needs a surface to which it can attach the decorations.

You take it from there.

Don't try to be weird or original. Just pick something that works and that you like to draw.

That sounds pretty neat. I'll try coming up with a few different ideas for that...

I like the flavour-themed adopts a lot - ICCs, Booze Sharks, and so on. Best idea I can come up with for those is using it to lure prey, which is a bit dark, but instead, how about they smell/look like fruit flavours to hide from bigger carnivores that would have no interest in fruit?

That's a neat idea!

It could also be a sexual display, like ostentatious bird feathers. Since sexual selection is more or less random, you can use it to justify almost any trait.

I already have one idea for a species with, so far, mundane features, but I worry that people won't like them if they don't have some weird magical design thing going on. If I describe the idea, can you tell me if it sounds okay or suggest things that might work? This idea I had might work but I'm not sure.

Sure! Go ahead!

I'm not sure the weird gimmick is actually necessary. It seems like people use it to distinguish their generic quadroped or humanoid from all the other generic quadropeds and humanoids, when they don't quite have the ability to draw different body shapes. (I mean like, cheetah vs. corgi, not fat v. thin)

Okay, my idea: -Physical features based loosely on weasels. I haven't decided whether to go with kemonomimi or full anthro, probably the former or possibly give them a "feral form" like Dainties have? -Raptor foot-claws, usable for digging, climbing, or hunting. -Caste system; scouts (small, frail, androgynous, fast), soldiers (big, muscular, monster hands), and rulers (most human-like). -I was concerned they'd be limited in colouration because they'd need camouflage but if they're not living in an Earth-like setting that's not a problem.

Big problems I'm having with the concept; a) thinking they need a gimmick, and b) I conceived them as living on the fringes of human society, a la goblins, so I'm worried their clothing design options and so on would be limited because they wouldn't have access to good stuff - even if they're thieves in the manner of goblins and weasels they wouldn't be able to get matching stuff. The flavour gimmick is my favourite because it makes for easy colour schemes etc but I don't know if it makes sense with these guys.

It's a solid idea so far.

The first thing that jumps out is the digging claw. Your weasels will have to have animal feet because a human foot is not structured in a way that can support the use of a large claw.

Second, you don't have to fit them to our world, where stolen things don't match and don't have any relationship to candy. You can change their world to match them.

Maybe they live in a faraway kingdom in a warm place full of fruit and sugar, where the primary exports are exotic candies and pastry chefs and confectioners from all over the world come to train. (like the isle of glassblowers in Venice) For a culture like that, it's natural for the fashions to follow food flavors. If everyone is wearing themed clothes, it would be easy to steal some. If the architecture is candy colored and shaped, candy colored clothes would blend in.

If you like, you can go a step further and turn them into little helper fairies, like brownies, that show up in the night to help with impossible desserts and give inspiration, in exchange for offerings left out for them.

Can you go a bit further into the caste system? What about their society makes it necessary? How do the rulers keep power? How big is the population? What kind of resources do they have and how does their government work?

Yeah, I was going to go with digitigrade feet and humanoid hands. I'm mostly debating on the faces and whether to go with full-body fur. I'm honestly kind of creeped out by the fur-on-human-faces look (like these) so I want to go with either fully humanoid or fully animal faces.

Caste system is based on biological body differences, like ants, and my desire to have a range of body types without having to draw lots of different bases - I can go with three basic ones (skinny, muscular, plump), and let the owners fine-tune.

Literal candy might not fit the look I'm picturing. I'll try a few different things. If they live in lots of different environments they could have lots of different colour schemes. If it doesn't work I can use those for a different critter.

Let's take a step back. What's the overall feel you're going for? Whimsical? Gritty? High fantasy? Dystopian?

As a general rule for all creative type stuff, be it art or literature or OS design, all of the other design elements have to serve the type of experience you want others to have when interacting with your thing.

Honestly, I'm not sure. I think my problem is I'm alternating between trying to find something that serves the design and trying to make the design serve the theme.

Like, I guess I'm thinking of things like Dainties, which have really widely varied themes, but they have specific reasons in their concept to be varied because they adapt to a huge variety of environments.

I've had a look at Dainties, and they really aren't that varied. The feel is East-Asian modern drama. They may have a weird physical feature, but they play just like humans in those Korean romcoms, and most fit into a character trope common in those types of stories. It's what the species is designed for.

Let me think of some examples..

One the extreme end of whimsical, there's MLP and Floraverse. Everything from the colors to the dialogue fits the kind of summarized feel. Floraverse goes into weird cubist literary territory, and the art and character designs reflect that. You're never quite sure what you're looking at.

MLP is kid friendly, and has to stay super clean and super consistent, spelling out every plot point in clear steps, because the target audience is 5 years old. That's reflected in the character design, which is deviations from a default template with simple changes to indicate things like "THIS CHARACTER IS MALE" and "THIS CHARACTER IS TALL AND SKINNY".

On the extreme end of hyper masculine modern are things like Breaking Bad, the Matrix, and all those spy novels. It's ultra cool and a lot of the character focus is on showcasing special abilities that make that character better than everyone else but not necessarily unique. At the core, it's about a hero getting props. As a species, sergals fall into this category.

There's also western romance, which tends to be dark and elegant, but glosses over anything messy and focuses on the emotional outbursts vs restraint aspect. In the art, there's dark brooding figures and sometimes blood and gore, but nobody is ever actually bad or ugly, and they ignore things like corpses farting. Angels, demons, demigods, and half bloods shunned by both sides go here. It's the kind of story that misunderstood teenagers can really identify with.

Eastern romance can be summed up at "really unlikely coincidences thrust some characters with highly polarized personalities into high stakes circumstances" in the same way that old style high fantasy can be summarized as "guy kills things/people in order to gain political power".

Eastern romance uses a lot of cues to tell you which trope a character belongs to, and the art is characterized by the presence of these cues. JRPG does the same thing, but with a different set of cues and tropes. Both have a bit of a feminized shorthand feel.

What kind of feel are you going for? This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it can at least give you some guidance about how your weasels should look and act, and what kind of society they have.

Don't say "any" or "leave it up to the buyer", because you're going to end up with a specific feel whether you try to or not. It ends up a bit more solid if you're deliberate about the world design.

Well, the "weasel" nature of it was inspired by how weasels are portrayed in folklore. I was a huge huge fan of Brian Jacques as a kid, still am a bit, and I was sort of picturing something like that; dark and violent enough to give morbid ten-year-olds a thrill but still basically cute and the good guys win in the end. The portrayal of different species in that is heavily folklore-based, and weasels and similar creatures tend to be "evil" or at least self-interested, prone to thieving and banditry, but several of them at least have understandable motives or aren't really so bad, and even the ones who are are still cute fuzzy animals so they're not very frightening, so the writer could get away with a hell of a lot more gore than a book featuring humans would. I really like that character dynamic, but the "low fantasy" setting feels a bit limiting in designs. Was thinking of having injuries/scars as a trait, sort of go the menhera/guro-lolita type of cute? Also those books have a lot of food focus hence why I was trying to make the candy colour schemes work.

ETA: A similar author is Robin Jarvis, who did sort of animal folklore meets cosmic horror thing which I also really enjoyed.