Anthros Body language

Flexible lips are another thing. If you take a close look at human lips, they're actually a rim of skin curled out. In us and other mammals, this part of the skin has its own muscles, so that we can suckle when we're babies. Because of this, we can move them, though humans have taken it to an extreme—the motion of the lips sends emotional messages as well. Females tend to have fuller lips, which is an easy way to accentuate the sex of your character.

Lips are also important for talking—notice how you pronounce 'm', 'p', 'b', 'f', 'w', 'v' (talking birds can have problems with those). If your character is a bird, you may have to use a compromise—you either keep it realistic and never use any expression around the "lips", or treat the opening of the beak as normal, human lips.Simplification can let you drag the attention to what really matters in your design. Make the feet flat, exaggerate the muscles, make the eyes huge and expressive as in manga characters—and you'll make it clear that it's not realistic because it's not supposed to be, not because you didn't know how to do it.

Simplification removes the unnecessary elements and exaggerates the important ones, but you need to do it consistently to create a convincing image. For example, a nose made from a simple shape without the nose holes will look good only if the rest of the face doesn't have too many details. Otherwise, the lack will be visible and unsettling for the viewer.

Finally, when your character has a full, roughly sketched body, you can start adding details to it. Does it have hands or paws? What do its feet look like? What does it wear, what clothes, what jewelry? This is the most fun part about designing a character, but there still should be nothing random about it. Even the details should be functional!

The feet, for example, are used for walking, not for looking cute. The paw pads are not random—they're cushions for the bones in the foot. If your character is bipedal, do paws instead of hands make sense, if it doesn't really use these "feet" for walking? You need to think about all these things if you want to finish the design in a convincing way.

It's not only about anatomy. The jewelry, clothing, and armor must fit the body and allow for natural movement. Don't just draw a bracelet on every empty area of the skin; try to become this character for a while and see what you would wear and how if you were them. Maybe long, dangling earrings are not a good idea for a hunting cat-man? Is wearing a skirt wise if you're moving by hopping? If you keep thinking this way, you'll avoid mistakes that break the illusion you're trying to create