Defining gender in furries

[TheDXM]

I'm brain-dead, so I thought I'd ask: With humans, the details that make one look male and female are a little easier to define, but with furries, I'm starting to get really lost. I've kinda hit the point where I can do really decent portraits, but only of (fairly androgynous) males.

Obviously, when you deal with different species, the results are going to vary, but if anyone knows of a fairly universal way to make furries look either more male, or more female, I'd love to hear your ideas. Please, and thank you.

[Zedd]

It souly depends really..If you want a girly boy..Try a good pair of felines will help..They cant help its

[Zina]

Are you just going from the neck up? In that case, I usually tend to make my female's faces more 'soft' and feminine looking, sometimes making their eyes slightly bigger, whereas I make the male's face more 'hard' and masculine.
I'd also suggest studying human faces and seeing the differences in the male face and the female face. It'd probably help a lot.

[Tiger_T]

D'Oh. Boobies, Dude.

Ok, seriously now.

I think eyelashes will help a bit making one look more female.

[Jack McSlay]

but if you come to think of it, the actual animals usually don't have much obvious facial differences from gender to gender. but some features such as shorter snouts and proeminent eyelashes as well as lips will likely make it look more feminine.

[TheDXM]

Zedd: I agree. I only seem to be able to get felines to look either adrogynous or feminine. Fur pattern makes a bit of a difference though.

Zina: An excellent suggestion. Although I took most of what I understood about defining gender in furries FROM what I knew about humans. The neck area and cheek doesn't seem so different but when you consider how different the eyes, ears, mouth, as well as the forehead are it leaves me in a bit of a grey area. The problem seems to be that I can't give quite as many features to furries, so I have less to work with...

Jack&Tiger: The snout thing is a sound idea, and something I hadn't thought of, I'll have a better look at that.

Thank ya all.

[RJ]

I usually stick to making females more curvy and soft, and males more... well, I guess "heavier" is the best way to describe it. Though, there's been times where people have mistaken my females for males (but I guess it's easy to get RJ and her brother Blaze mixed up since they're so similar anyway).

But apart from that, I also like to use colours as a way of defining. For females I'll usually use much brighter colours, and males are more darker.

ie.

RJ: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/35052349/
Blaze: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/35469403/
Both near each other: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/33324956/

[Zina]

Zina: An excellent suggestion. Although I took most of what I understood about defining gender in furries FROM what I knew about humans. The neck area and cheek doesn't seem so different but when you consider how different the eyes, ears, mouth, as well as the forehead are it leaves me in a bit of a grey area. The problem seems to be that I can't give quite as many features to furries, so I have less to work with...

I guess it depends a lot on species, as well as your own personal style.
Care to maybe upload a few examples of your work? Maybe one of a girl and one of a boy. It's easier for me to give tips when I actually have something to look at and compare.

[Jack McSlay]

it could also be a good idea to make different fur work. Girls will likely have a more soft, regular face fur, males could have more grumpy, irregular face fur, so drawing soft faces on ladies against drawing extra fur work on guys could help also.

however you'll have to pay attention to how you do it, if you exaggerate, you may make the char look old instead

[rt]

I'll add to the list the forehead and brow. In general this goes along with the softer vs harder features points.

[In general] On a guy a flatter forehead, and "stronger" brow. "Stronger" being a shaper angle, or more sudden end between the forehead and eyes. Could have some extra bone causing the brow to stick out on a side view, or more bone causing it to hide the eyes some what.

The opposite on a girl, rounder forhead, a more gentle smoother brow (less bone covering the eyes, less chance of extra bone sticking out curving nicely into the eye socket instead).

The brow difference helps give the look of bigger eyes look on ladies. More of a doe eyed, round, or almond shape look. While a more inset longer eyes on men. More of a seedy and long eyed look.

Also on the brow can add the bushier eyebrows on the guys, and more fine sculpted eyebrows here for the lady, as is the current fashion trend. (Add the eyelashes for the ladies as has been said as well)

Would seem to apply for most furries, alot of work into the eye area here, and some into the facial outline.

Looks like the other points have been hit, the rouded forehead goes with the rounded softer overall face (cheeks, chin) on the ladies. Flatter harder features on the guy side (squared off or flatter chin, straighter lines on the side of the face for less rounded cheeks).

Possibly add some pink around the lips on a lady (or draw in a lip) vs. none for a guy.

Can play with the hair too, some subtle difference can help between a guy cut or girl cut either long/short/middle.

Hope some of this is some help.

[GabrielsThoughts]

well there is the easy solution of placing a black bar across the naughty bits and drawing the character to Adonis/ Eros specifications

[King Of Hearts]

Ive already lost the ability to differentiate between guys and girls because of looking too much at bishies.

I usually just focus on the eyelashes to give the illusion of gender difference to add with the body frame.

Using more straight lines for guys also work for me, strong squared jaws or some mild cheekbones.

[Miaka]

I usually make rounder faces for girls, with longer eyelashes, rounder eyes, and more lip detail.

Though I'm also very not good at males. >>

[Kenji]

[...] with longer eyelashes, [...] and more lip detail.

Those, uh.. don't always really specify females..

[Jack McSlay]

[...] with longer eyelashes, [...] and more lip detail.

Those, uh.. don't always really specify females..

like you've never seen a guy who looks like a girl, or vice-versa

[Kenji]

[...] with longer eyelashes, [...] and more lip detail.

Those, uh.. don't always really specify females..

like you've never seen a guy who looks like a girl, or vice-versa

Actually I was more making a joke with Miaka. Considering how people have argued to me about my gender.

[Jack McSlay]

[...] with longer eyelashes, [...] and more lip detail.

Those, uh.. don't always really specify females..

like you've never seen a guy who looks like a girl, or vice-versa

Actually I was more making a joke with Miaka. Considering how people have argued to me about my gender.

I was being more of sarcastic as well, I've seen lots of anime chars that were more like "wtf? it's a guy?"

[Kenji]

Ah, alright then.

Honestly, though, I don't see why people have such a difficulty distinguishing "bishie" furries and females. Except for the cases where a guy furry was wearing, like, makeup and a girl's outfit, I've really never had trouble distinguishing. I mean, everyone keeps saying that Dan's a bishie, but he really doesn't look it to me. Him nor Merl, though Merl might not look it much to many anyways.

Anyways, the way I usually distinguish males and females is giving males cheekfur, aside from the occassions of certain species such as horses like my current av. If there's a fluffy girl, I tend to just give them a very slight amount of cheek fluff.