I started to write something about skeletons, but then I was attacked by mummies.

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I’m half a day short of being out of that house and in my apartment for a full week and every time I hear a sound of certain pitch I still momentarily worry it’s the cat and he’s found me.

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Learn how to draw cartoons from somebody who can’t!

This looks like somebody printed out sprites from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! and traced over them. Well it’s not manga reasonableness, I suppose. They had to call it something once How to Draw Webcomics circa 1998 stopped selling. 40 Basic Lessons. Lesson 1: Don’t start at Barnes and Noble. Lesson 2: Don’t buy a book by a Canadian. In recognition of my own upcoming book about not getting awkward, probably a bit sensitive allegedly professional artists to sue your website I reveal my own first lesson which is to not type their names into google and then not to place links to additional art of theirs you find online. He probably has enough problems if his site is half on Angelfire and employing eXTReMe trackers.

Although to be fair the official Japanese Gunstar Gyros Game Boy Advance sequel has artwork like this so maybe the times are a-just changing or however it goes. (The only thing that doesn’t change is me; my cousins once told me I would appreciate Bob Dylan and not care how awful his singing was by the time I was in their age category). Other countries, including Japan, love junk that used to be popular in America, and it just so happens that the substandard of imitation of Japanese stuff is one of them. Another thing that’s changed:

I saw that book in a store “last week”

and got a bit annoyed at it, but I can’t say I’m surprised that it exists or that people might have bought it.

I can understand the “fursona” thing… you have a personal character that you associate with yourself. Maybe I think it’s boring and occasionally just a bit egotistical, but it’s personal. If you’re just going to draw yourself all the time anyway it might as well be a fanciful version. I have a book by Arrr Crumb full of drawings of himself in varying states of dress next to word balloons talking about himself and after a while I just got sick of looking at him.
“Furry” as a gimmick copied out of a book is stupid. I can understand, again, with reservations, why you’d want some cheap and hacky shortcut to drawing pirates or giant robots, but “furry,” by this book’s implied definition, just means a regular, average, unremarkable person with an animal head and also a tail for some evolution-ignorant non-reason. The only reasonable reasons are “it’s cute” or “it’s silly” or “it’s stupid,” and not meant to be taken seriously, because it’s fantasy and made up. People are SERIOUS about dumb old furries. So look at real animals, and real people, and figure it out. Or cartoon people and cartoon animals. But for frog’s sake you shouldn’t need a whole book to tell you to make mix-em-ups.
You can see, or I imagine that you might, that this is directly beside books professing to instruct on how to draw dragons, fantasy creatures, generic super heroes, specific copyrighted Marvel characters and MANGA ANIMALS. It’s all rubbish.

Also present, Drawing Vampires, How to Draw MORE Pirates and Erotic Manga: Draw Like them Experts.

I’m personally still waiting for Erotic Mangia: How to Eat Like a Harlot.
Ehhh. If “furry” isn’t a trendy gimmick, market forces would welcome it becoming one. I say it already has, with junk like Avatar and Bolt (which are enough alike for this context despite not really being all that much alike) getting major pushes / watched. Draw Furries: the Junior Novelization is merely filling the gap between “I can draw cartoon animals” and… the erotic manga book, I guess.

People should realize that these books are the artistic equivalent of those Atkins, South Beach, Pork ‘n Styrofoam et ew diet books. They won’t, but they should. I don’t doubt that there is actual good advice and occasional bits to take inspiration from, but that stuff is easy to find for free if you care to look for it or ask sensible people without a financial stake about.

On the topic of “fursonas,” none of these dorks are mine because none of them do anything that I do and only one has fur, besides. I am very boring. However, I also like a lot less dumb things than they do.

Like them, for example.

I mean, don’t like them at all.
If I made a character to represent myself it would probably be a ferris wheel that got shut down after somebody fell off it. Or a potato. Or a scoop.