Animal lovers

It can be helpful sometimes to base a characters appearance on an animal likeness,  people can easily associate the attributes of the animal to the human character. Even thinking about the animal while you are drawing can help put the feel of its character into the drawing (because of course you are drawing the character not the animal). Sometimes in the case of designing creatures you might do the opposite and suggest different human characters into the facial features . The most obvious forms of this are called anthropomorphic, having a bipedal creature almost immediately creates a human association. In games and in old funny science fiction films and series its more about saving money- (like lost in space having someone dressed up as a giant carrot).  The advantage of anthropomorphic  creatures is the familiarity and acceptability they bring.