Ursa Major Awards 2018 - Nominations are open until Feb. 16, 2019
It's time to nominate the contenders for the 2018 Ursa Major Awards! You can send in your nominations until February 16, 2019. We'll see which of them get onto the final ballot in March, when voting opens, and the winners will be announced at AnthrOhio in late May.
If you really liked something in 2018 that had anthropomorphic content, either inside or outside the fandom, you can nominate up to five things in each category! Nominations are completely optional - you can even skip entire categories. All you need to do is go to the nominations page, click where it says "Enroll", and give it a valid email address. You'll be emailed a code, and you can use that to log in and fill out the nomination form.
The Ursa Major Awards have been running since 2001, as a way for our fandom to recognize excellence and creativity in the furry arts. There are 13 categories: Best Anthropomorphic Motion picture, Dramatic short work or series, Novel, Short fiction, Other literary work, Non-fiction work, Graphic story, Comic strip, Magazine, Published illustration, Game, Website, and Costume (Fursuit).
When it comes to nominating, a lot of us make use of the 2018 Recommended Anthropomorphics List for ideas. But remember - you can nominate things that aren't on that list! I'll be adding a comment below to mention things that didn't get onto it.
And after we posted about the 2018 list a few weeks ago, wow, it really expanded! Well, everything except the Fursuit category, which went from one fursuit to two. So... yeah, if any fursuits blew you away in the last year, please nominate them! The nomination form doesn't take attachments, so you have to provide a text link to an online photo (taken in 2018), and mention who made the fursuit. And as with the other categories, you can nominate up to five.
Also it's important to note that you don't need to nominate things in all the categories. You might be very passionate about a particular category, while having no opinions about some of the others. You can even fill out the nomination form gradually, and edit your choices later - As long as you keep your login code, you can go back in and make changes. It really helps if you're tackling several difficult-to-choose categories; you can split your decision-making over several sessions. (Just remember to click on "Submit Information" each time.)
The 2018 list of Recommendations can, however, be somewhat daunting. Short Fiction category? 41 submissions. Graphic Story? 77. And the Dramatic Short Work or Series category has 78. That's a lot, so being somewhat bored this weekend, I decided to organize those 78 into smaller categories. (Except for a couple that I thought were redundant or borderline.) Hopefully this will help people pick their nominees!
Productions by Furry fans (that I know of):
- There was a silly Japanese music video called Chicken Attack, which inspired Wumi, Polar The Lion and Click to make a parody fursuit video, Clicken Attack.
- Never Be Alone (Blankie)
- Ottermelon (Temiree)
Animation school projects:
- Brush: A Fox Tale (Willi Anton & Faustina Arriola)
- Mice, a small story (Isart Digital)
- Pine (India Crooke)
Indie animated shorts (in increasing order of YouTube followers):
- Night in the Woods Animated Tribute (Sarah Y / Whatchyagonnado)
- No Evil, episodes 29-32 (Betsy Lee)
- Blue Orb (Leafydragon - also a Furry fan? Not sure)
- Cliffside (pitch for a series by Liam Vickers Animation)
- Bird Town News (Piemations)
Established-studio animated shorts:
- Bilby (Dreamworks) (It used to be online but now seems to be gone; the trailer doesn't do it justice.)
- Koji (pitch for a series by Studio Mir, who animated The Legend of Korra)
Advertisements (surprisingly few this year):
Anime:
- Aggretsuko
- Dragon Pilot
- Future Card Buddyfight X All Star Fight
- Killing Bites (mature content)
Western TV productions:
- The Adventures of Puss in Boots (Season 6) (Dreamworks/Netflix)
- The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (reboot) (Dreamworks/Amazon)
- Bubba the Bear (episode of Bobcat Goldthwait's Misfits & Monsters, TruTV)
- BoJack Horseman (Season 5) (Netflix)
- DuckTales (reboot, Season 2) (Disney)
- Final Space (Indie/TBS)
- Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny (Dreamworks/Amazon)
- The Lion Guard (Season 2) (Disney)
- Littlest Pet Shop: A World of Our Own (Hasbro/Discovery Family)
- Muppet Babies (reboot) (Disney)
- My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Season 8) (Hasbro/Discovery Family)
- Peepoodo & the Super F**k Friends (mature content, Indie)
- Summer Camp Island (Warner/Cartoon Network)
- Super Dinosaur (Teletoon)
- Watership Down (mini-series) (BBC/Netflix)
Go! Cartoons (Frederator/Sony):
Nickolodeon Animated Shorts:
- Bad Bad Bunny
- The Ballad of Bea and Cad
- Bear Wrestler
- Broduel
- Charlie and Mr. Two
- Cupcakery of Doom
- Dia De Los Tacos
- DJ Cluck & MC Mole
- Dog and Squirrel
- Earmouse and Bottle
- Fun Times with Rez
- The Girl From Dinosaur Island
- Happy Zoo
- Harpy Gee
- Howdy, Harrdy
- Ice Station Zedonk
- Jan and Bobbie
- Jo Minkus
- Lazybones
- Leashes
- Low Life
- Meat Pie
- My Friend Pancake
- The Myth of Robo Wonder Kid
- Night Crew
- Off the Shelf
- The Outsiders
- Pig and a Blanket
- Plunger the Dragon
- Ramblers
- Russell & Fox's Cruel and Unusual Detention
- Someplace Awesome
- Space Mission: Danger!
- The Super Dooper Studios
- Tennis, the Good Boy
- Torum Tellum
- Werebeast
- Woodstump!
Nickolodeon mini-series: - Bug Salad
- Mr. Sheep and Sleepy Bear
Comments
Ok, here's some extra stuff that didn't make it onto the 2018 Recommended List:
Game:
Dramatic Short Work or Series:
Graphic Story:
Other Literary Work:
Website:
Here's one more for the Anime category:
Typical that flayrah has forgot Furry Times again. The Ursa Major awards are just a popularity contest because how many who are actually reading these words has ever hear about it or let alone has been to their site. Well Furry Times have features you will never see here including new fiction. Jack Meets a wolf boy is the latest story and be warned it is cub yiff but if you want to see good writing then the awards should go to Furry Times. https://furrytimes.net/2019/01/19/jack-meets-a-wolf-by-zane-lewis/
Copy Editing your comment, just habit at this point:
Not disagreeing with you on the popularity thing, since it is a popularity based award. There was about one article that you released this year that I found useful and had information I didn't know about, which was the rearrangements of the ConSuite, Registration, etc at MFF. Heck I even shared it with people and credited you for bringing it up.
To me, non-fiction is not a contest, as long as it is doing its job to inform the audience.
It's not a good idea to copy-edit out important facts, such as that the fiction in question a) is sexual, and b) involves a 'cub' (albeit a 16-year-old human is pushing both the underage and animal portions of that definition); also, it's c) violently non-consensual, which I suspect some people would like to know ahead of time.
Seconded. I didn't see Ahmar's post (at first), and with the warning copy-edited out of the reply, that was not what I wanted to see on my damn phone when I followed the link. Which reminds me, I forgot to mention SoFurry under Websites. (High chance of NSFW content)
Anyway, Flayrah doesn't owe anyone special attention. Individually, we like what we like. I can't possibly list everyone and everything, and I've only got so many minutes every day. I'm not going to meticulously browse all the backlogs on every single thing I follow. If by luck something interesting pops up on my screen, great, if not, too bad. And yeah, it's a popularity contest. And no, the Internet's not fair with who gets more attention. So we plug a bunch of stuff for the Ursa Majors but leave you out? You're not alone, and you're no more deserving of extra recognition - lots of people want to get noticed. There's a local fur here in his late teens that constantly plugs his social media and wants more followers. And why is it Flayrah's job to promote you? You and your friends had over 11 months to add your site to the 2018 Recommended List. 99 times out of 100 they'll put in whatever you send in to them.
Attention takes work and luck. Ahmar, you and I can post all the interesting links we like - and that means jack shit in comparison to the furry fans who get off their asses and do more challenging tasks like running conventions and publishing houses, risking their money to do so. Or imagine putting your heart into writing a 50,000-word novel over several months, and then no one paying any attention in the great sea of digital books. But oh, boo-hoo our poor ignored websites. Someone makes a video on their phone showing a squirrel doing something silly and suddenly they've got two million views and then are forgotten a month later. There's no pattern to it; life's not fair.
So throw your work into your site, and maybe you'll get recognition, and maybe not. It feels good to get a positive response, sure, but if that's what's keeping you going... So many souls shouting their thoughts and opinions into the Internet. We should be so lucky that we make contact and even make a positive difference with even one stranger. So sure, be in a shit mood, throw the shit around because you feel slighted. You kept using Flayrah to promote your own site, and then got into the Alt-Right-vs-Everyone-Else fight, and we'd had quite enough of that. The late Fred Patten wrote thousands of reviews over fifty years - because he loved it. Often with little to no feedback. Do what you love. Don't expect and demand recognition, and it'll feel all that much sweeter if it happens - even if it's just a few sparse drops. Maybe you'll get lucky. Most of us won't. Imagine all the creative people... that you've never heard of.
Just a castaway / An island lost at sea / Another lonely day / With no one here but me.
More loneliness / Than any man could bear / Rescue me before I fall into despair.
I'll send an SOS to the world, I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle
A year has passed since I wrote my note / But I should have known this right from the start.
Only hope can keep me together / Love can mend your life / But love can break your heart.
I'll send an SOS to the world, I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle
Walked out this morning / Don't believe what I saw / A hundred billion bottles,
Washed up on the shore
Seems I'm not alone at being alone / A hundred billion castaways / Looking for a home
I'll send an SOS to the world
I hope that someone gets my
Message in a bottle
Why do you think I edited out the link before you had a chance to reply? I actually didn't read it and assumed it was a review for some kind of controversial story. Not... that...
So yeah.
I mean, then there is his coverage of the Ursa Majors itself recently which claims that nominations are in and while I would correct him that that isn't the case and that nominees are being submitted right now. But not informing him of the inaccuracy prevents him from nominating his meme and shower inducing story board.
If he were to nominate one of his non-fiction stories I would choose the one where he calls out DogPatch and says: "But I will go on record saying I do not support cub porn in any way shape or form. You will never see CP on this news blog ever."
https://furrytimes.net/2019/01/12/dogpatch-press-is-pro-cub-porn/
Uh huh... yeah... about that...
In what world is 'never ever' equal to 'in about a week and a half'.
This chode used to have Softpaw magazine on the downloads page of his site where he has a bunch of other stolen stuff. He got hit with a c&d for it.
Egads... Someone posted a link to a link to it back in 2012.
Here's a report about cub porn on his site.
He's been posting ripped off porn for years and years (beware of these links): https://furrytimes.net/tag/nsfw/ There's the entire "daddy's little secrets" by Zaush and a tag for cub porn.
copy of the report about his site
Wayback Machine has his Softpaw posts from 2012.
Genuinely laughing right now
It's almost funny in a way. Patch accused me of promoting child porn and whatever other weird things he fantasised I said and now he's getting the same accusations because he dared to let someone on his site question the groupthink. That's one of the strangest things, people are going after him for something someone else said! I probably should argue against the accusations but there's a certain satisfaction seeing him get a taste of his own medicine. I'm not proud of it but I'm only human and he lost my sympathy a while back.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
It didn't help that he only posts guest posts under his account/name on the site.
I never understood why he couldn't change the by line for them instead of having to force it to the title.
I'm pretty sure Wordpress makes you manually create an author profile in your settings in order to list them in the byline.
Maybe we forgot about you, but you clearly didn't forget about us.
Wait are you saying that because your site hosts the writing of someone else, you should get an award for writing it?!
It's time again for an award that few care about or even know about. Every year the few running this thing try to get people to believe it's still relevant (it hasn't been for over a decade). Nobody who actually produces quality content actually cares if they win. Heck, many of them probably never even know they were nominated. Some of them might well not wish to be if they did know. Keep beating on this rotting dead horse if you really feel the need, but if suddenly one year there were no more Usra Major awards, I doubt anyone would even notice.
Why do you feel the need to make such a comment? Your criticism seems to be that it is not well known and so not that important. So, wouldn't an article that improves it's visibility to be a good thing? I just don't understand what you are hoping to accomplish with such a comment.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
What about Vending Machine by FattieDragonite? That was a great furry animated short film.
You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/-ei0iq800oM
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