Once again the men look like men and the woman look like woman, but you want men to look like men (except for parts that you won’t see), and women to look like men.
Not at all. I want the animal creatures to not mimic apes, but instead be /bipedal/ versions of the animal they're made to resemble.
As for the male dragonborn looking like men, you'll notice if you reread it that i criticized the male dragonborn as well, for having bulging chest muscles, and "external genitalia".
And "how can you tell, with the lizard photos?" True if you don't know the lizards it wouldnt be all that obvious, but the bearded dragon has the beardy spine things, and darker coloration, and the female gecko has lighter skin, bigger eyes, spines that look like eyelashes, and a more feminine looking face shape.
In a fantasy race, making the males look like the more masculine looking lizard and the females look like the more feminine looking lizard would be good enough, perhaps with a bit of a size difference if it wasnt obvious enough for you. That would be great. And they'd both have lizard-shaped bodies. Not rippling schwarzenegger chest muscles or pamela anderson boobs, and yet, it would still be obvious.
The men should look like (whatever the males of that animal look like) and the women should look like (whatever the females of that animal look like). In some cases that results in bigger, scarier females than males, like with Hyenas. and thats perfectly cool.
In many animals the difference is less noticeable than in humans. In some the differences are bigger.
Consider this image.
If there were Pheasant people in D&D, I'd expect the women to be smaller, and have the female coloration, and the men to be larger with the vibrant colors.
I would be irritated by it if either one had a human face, I'd be irritated by if they shaped the female Pheasant like a female human, just like I'd be irritated by if the male was shaped like schwarzenegger.
I want them to look like pheasants, but more upright, possibly a little thinner, with longer legs. Still shaped like birds.
Another:
If there were turtle people designed to look like this type of turtle, I'd want the women to be considerably larger, the men smaller and leaner, and both to have the fairly distinctive heads and faces; Additionally, the men would have those ridges on the shell, and the females wouldn't. In fact, the male would likely be a size-category smaller.
But have them stand on two legs, give them opposable thumbs, and maybe make them a bit thinner in the waist to explain how they balance standing upright.
I would want them to look like turtles. Not like men, not like women, turtles.
And yes, I picked particularly sexually dimorphic animals. If I were using less sexually dimorphic animals, I would have them stay looking similar, and maybe alter the face of whichever gender is less aggressive to look softer, with slightly bigger eyes, and less angular.
If it were crocodiles
(Harder to tell apart) You're looking at a thinner body and snout, less convex airhole for breathing in the women. in other words, I'd expect the male croc to basically just look like the female croc, but bigger. And not like a dude with a croc head, but like a croc on two legs.
But lets say we for some reason *need* to give them much more human shapes than that (I'd rather not, but say thats not optional)
And say we need to make female turtle people and male turtle people look like humans.
Females
Awful
Yuck
Still Pretty Bad
Tolerable, but not great.
Males
Not Great
Least Ridiculous one I found
Okay, but maybe too cartoony a style
And this one just looks adorable
