by Adriana Disano

Created on: August 28, 2010

Anthropomorphic artists are artists who choose to portray characters who are animal in nature with human characteristics. Artists who portray these characters may choose to make their creations sexual in nature, or they may choose not to.

However, anthropomorphic characters, or "anthros," are not predominantly sexual.

Fetishes are obsessions that are sexual in nature. While anthro artists have been given a reputation as being fetishists, this is largely due to the bias the anthro style of art places on sexuality. As animals naturally wear no clothing, many artists choose to portray their anthros as being clothed only in fur. This tendency has attracted many artists who are, predominantly, fetishists, to the anthro style of art.

This does not make anthro art by itself fetish material.

For many anthro artists, the desire to draw anthropomorphic characters is completely non-sexual. As an avid anthro artist, I drew my inspiration for anthropomorphic characters when I was young from a series of books that featured anthropomorphic animals as the protagonists. For me, drawing anthros was the same as drawing any human. It was a way for me to unleash my creativity and create complex stories and characters who had interweaving relationships and backstories.

Anthropomorphism, for me, was a completely non-sexual deviation from traditional human drawing. Later I would discover the internet communities of anthro fetishists, and was shocked to discover that my hobby had been sexualized.

Classic examples of anthropomorphism include classic Looney Tunes characters like Bugs Bunny, or the cast of classic cartoon Tom and Jerry. Later, as anthropomorphized characters became recognized as sexual images, the popularity of casts of anthro characters would be diminished. However, we can still see examples of Anthropomorphism in popular cartoons like Ben 10, whose main character morphs into aliens, and Johnny Test, whose protagonist has a best friend who was turned into a dog.

As is clear by these examples, it is quite possible to display Anthropomorphism in non-sexual ways. Provided that the anthropomorphized character is sexualized, it qualifies as fetish material; but then and only then.

When asking why non-fetishists draw anthropomorphized art, the answer is the same as why they draw any other type of art: for a sense of creative satisfaction, not for sexual satisfaction. When developing a set of anthropomorphized characters, I am careful to consider the method

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