furries tell me why this looks cute
nonfurries tell me why this looks weird
The art itself is good. I think the "weirdness" is almost entirely because there's a whole culture and group of people who have strong feelings about this so it's hard to look at it and not think "furry". Maybe more specifically, what looks weird is how human he looks (i.e. the hair style) and it feels like he is giving me bedrooms eyes.
If you are trying to make furry characters less... furry... maybe take a look at adult cartoons that use animals like Bojack Horseman or Aggretsuko. The characters are animals that look like humans, not humans that look like animals.
I don't think it is weird at all, I think it's adorable. This artist should be proud of their skills. I'm a non-furry.
I may be able to offer something on why some people react so negatively to furries, though. I grew up in a very religious environment, where there was a doctrine about how mixing human and animals is an abomination (FYI religious people commonly believe humans are not animals), and, dirty wicked evil sin-monsters and all that stuff. And there is really nothing unique about the place I crew up, there are thousands of 'religious communities' *cough*cults*cough* like that all over the world. So, you have the people who are brainwashed to hate things of this image's kind from the start, and you have the people in their periphery, who are influenced by those people, like spill-over from religion to humanity. I'm sure this theory doen't account for ALL anti-furries, but I'll bet it is a principle cause of a lot of it.
