A few reasons-
1) Harkovast has a lot of different cultures, so if the reader is going to have any hope of working out who is from where it is far easier if people from different places look completely different.

2) Making up alien creatures is hard. I didn't want to do star trek style people with crap glued to them but I wanted to keep them humanoid. So I based them all on animals so everyone can quickly grasp what each person is.

3)SWAT Kats was awesome.

4)So was Animals of Farthing Wood.

5)And finally, I just think they look really cool.

SWAT Kats lose to samurai pizza cats.

Haha, not really. Samurai pizza cats need to die in a ditch. Then die.

Say what you want about samurai pizza cats, but (as their theme tune observed) they've got more fur then any turtle ever had!

HOO-MAHNZ FOREVER!

They (almost) always win in whatever world they appear in! LotR, humans beat the orcs and breed faster than the elves. D&D, the same applies, and the world is 90% inhabited by humans. Dragonlance, humans humans humans!

However, with humans you would be harder pressed to have magic work the way it does. Humans are the fastest adapters, and would not be held back by the bounds of culture that define what you could do.

Anyways.

Just getting that out of my system.

SWAT humans?
That would be a terrible cartoon!
And samurai pizza humans?
Not gunna happen!

SWAT humans? There are already a lot of things out like that, if not called by that name. Samurai pizza humans? That would be an awesome company, instead of a cartoon. O would buy pizza from a samurai!

Yeah, those would be good companies, but still poor cartoons.
I want a samurai pizza too!

“If the Pizza arrives late, we'll commit Hari-Kari!”

“And you get to watch!”
Yeah, we need to start that business ASAP.

*If attacked by ninjas while waiting for the delivery, we will provide free pizza at your funeral!*

I could provide the weaponry, and maybe the armor!

I will provide nothing, so to compensate for this I will only take 10% of the earnings.

*sigh* I'm going to be the hari-kari, monkey, aren't I?

I remember Farthing Wood, vaguely. I'd forgotten how much death there was in it! Like Watership Down and Plague Dogs. Especially Plague Dogs…

That is why there is so much carnage in Harkovast, I think of those shows when I think of talking animals.
It's a tough grim world!

How unlike real life! It's always bright and happy, EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME! It gets a bit tiring being happy all the time.

But it is very unlike what most people expect from talking animals.
Rats of Nim, animals of farthing wood, watership down (especially watership down) all paint a far grimmer vision then, say, mickey mouse or bugs bunny.

You do realize that creations like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny are just goofy human personalities dressed up in animals to make them cute? Cartoons are just easier to make and get away with stuff in if the characters aren't human.

In a way Harkovast characters are nothing but human personalities dressed up in animals clothing too. I think that the concept is sound though. How long have you been working on this anyway? I have a world I've been working on for 12 years and it's still not finished yet.

Snowhunter, I could have made them all humans, its true, but I like that they are a bit alien.
Also, as I mentioned, there are a LOT of cultures in Harkovast, and if they didn't all look very very different readers would stand little chance of telling who was who.
(26 cultures last time I checked, but its probably more now!)
I think I've rolling Harkovast around in my brain for about 14 years (give or take a bit.)