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Winners of the 2018 Ursa Major Awards

Posted by on Mon 27 May 2019 - 19:47 — Edited by 2cross2affliction as of Sun 28 Jul 2024 - 22:09
Your rating: None Average: 4.3 (10 votes)

The winners of the 2018 Ursa Major Awards have been announced at AnthrOhio - it's been a busy month for awards in the fandom. Lions and tigers coyotes and (now) bears, oh my!

This year's winners and runners-up (listed in descending numbers of votes) are...

Best Motion Picture


Live-action or animated feature-length movies.

Best Dramatic Series or Short Work


TV series or one-shots, advertisements or short videos.


Best Novel


Written works of 40,000 words or more. Serialized novels qualify only for the year that the final chapter is published.


Best Short Fiction


Stories less than 40,000 words, poetry, and other short written works.


Best Other Literary Work


Story collections, comic collections, graphic novels, non-fiction works, and serialized online stories.

Best Non-Fiction Work


Includes documentaries, opinion pieces, and news articles.

Best Graphic Story


Includes comic books, and serialized online stories.


Best Comic Strip


Newspaper-style strips, including those with ongoing arcs.


Best Magazine


Edited collections of creative and/or informational works by various people, professional or amateur, published in print or online in written, pictorial or audio-visual form.


Best Published Illustration


Illustrations for books, magazines, convention program books, cover art for such, coffee-table portfolios.


Best Game


Computer or console games, role-playing games, board games.


Best Website


Online collections of art, stories, and other creative and/or informational works. Includes galleries, story archives, directories, blogs, and personal sites.

  • Winner: e621 (art website) [Mature Audiences]
     
  • Inkbunny (art website) [Mature Audiences]
  • WikiFur (furry fandom encyclopedia)
  • Lackadaisy.com (art and webcomic site)
  • Furry Writers' Guild (Supporting, informing, elevating, and promoting quality anthropomorphic fiction and its creators)

Best Fursuit


Anthropomorphic costumes.

  • Winner: SonicFox, made by Yamishizen/Fursuit Enterprise.
     
  • Penelope, made by Dludnerad and Paul Kidd, owned by Paul Kidd.
  • Zabivaka, FIFA World Cup Mascot 2018.
  • Ravtrag, made by Suit-a-dile, owned by Ravtrag.

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees, as well as a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to nominate and vote!

Don't forget, you can also start sending in suggestions to the 2019 Recommended Anthropomorphics List, and if you want to help cover the costs of running the Ursa Major Awards, they take donations through PayPal!

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Comments

2cross2affliction — Mon 27 May 2019 - 20:44
#1
Your rating: None Average: 2 (4 votes)

First of all:

VENGEANCE! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!Okay, not really, Isle of Dogs didn't beat, like, Avatar 2, but MWAHAHAHA ANYWAY! (and hey, it's the closest thing to an tiny DIY independent movie nominated, so there's that)

2nd of all, I mean, everybody arguing in the comments about too much fursuits and not enough art in the Ash Coyote review (which I don't think was entirely fair with that example if the critiques against general furry-on-furry video coverage were pretty much accurate), and then here we have outsider winner with "Down the Rabbit Hole", an in depth historical view that doesn't rely completely on fursuits and even finishes with the guy spotlighting what is obviously some furry art he kinda digs (and then using it on the thumbnail). Good winner, but also there's room for improvement when the non-furry guy does what actual furries are asking for better than what actual furries are doing.

3rd of all, SonicFox!

2cross2affliction — Mon 27 May 2019 - 20:51
#2
Your rating: None Average: 1 (3 votes)

Also, Aggretsuko is pretty great and Fred is the first posthumous winner and I mean I guess Flayrah could have done better but otherwise ... well, we didn't let Green Book win because we were mad at black people, so Good Job, guys!

2cross2affliction — Mon 27 May 2019 - 20:56
#3
Your rating: None Average: 2.7 (6 votes)

Also, also, I'm just going to preemptively post this; to the guy who is itching to type "nobody cares" into the comments section:

We all hate you. In fact, nobody likes you. Nobody has ever liked you. And odds are not looking in your favor that anybody will like you in the future. You're a terrible person. You suck. Please go fuck yourself.

Okay, thanks, bye!

BlackDog333 — Mon 27 May 2019 - 21:52
#4
Your rating: None Average: 3 (3 votes)

well, we didn't let Green Book win because we were mad at black people, so Good Job, guys!

I got a feeling I'm going to hate myself/you for asking this but, um, you wanna clarify that?

2cross2affliction — Mon 27 May 2019 - 22:27
#5
Your rating: None Average: 2.3 (6 votes)

Basically, the Academy awarded Green Book Best Picture despite being basically Driving Miss Daisy in Reverse (this time, the white guy drives the black person!); critics pointed out that's it's another movie about racism written, directed and produced by white men that ends with an individual overcoming his racism, while ignoring the more systemic aspects of American racism, which would allow the older, whiter audience it was aimed at (and which still constitutes a large portion of the Academy) to pat themselves on the back that they were one of the good ones without actually confronting any biases or privileges that they might have just by virtue of being born white in America.

Sure, it was a movie about "racism is bad"; but that isn't the problem anymore. Everybody knows racism is bad, now. Especially the racists. (I mean, just for an example, Donald Trump's main takeaway from Oscar night was that Spike Lee didn't like him, so Lee must be racist against white people.) When just about every critic pointed out that, despite it's basically true theme, it's still basically a "conservative" movie that does a poorer job actually addressing systemic racism than, well, your average recent Disney cartoon at this point, the audience it was designed to comfort (i.e. old white dudes who consider themselves liberal even if their politics were set in stone sometime before Watergate i.e. still a large voting mass in the Academy) took this personally. Who were these uppity kids to tell them they weren't liberal?

And, yes, there were interviews with anonymous Academy voters of a certain age who basically straight up said "I am voting for Green Book because who are they to tell me I'm not liberal enough? I voted for Moonlight and 12 Years a Slave and if that's not good enough for them, well, they had better learn their place, so there!" And the thing is these voters will almost certainly go to their graves never realizing who this "they" represented even to themselves.

(I mean, it was also a generally agreeable movie that was really more or less harmless, so it probably got a lot of genuine first place votes from older people who probably did realize the critics had a point, but they really liked it, darnit! Which is still problematic, but the lesser evil here.)

As far as furries are concerned, we were pretty apolitical overall; though maybe it could be said some of us voted for our "Best Picture" equivalent because we were mad at blue people.

BlackDog333 — Mon 27 May 2019 - 23:18
#6
Your rating: None Average: 3 (3 votes)

I guess I can't argue with any of that except maybe to add that the supposed progressiveness of movies of the last decade is borne of the same cynicism that made the decade before a slew of post-9/11 propaganda. I was mainly asking because not generally paying attention to the Ursa Major Awards, I figured your comment meant Green Book was nominated for one for some reason, and furries with their own (mostly subconscious and vehemently denied) racism tanked it because a bunch of them were mad at black people for some reason (which they often are, don't get me started on the way some of them reacted to SonicFox's acceptance speech).

Sonious — Mon 27 May 2019 - 23:09
#7
Your rating: None Average: 5 (3 votes)

1) Was that directed by the same guy that did Fantastic Mr Fox or something, otherwise I'm not seeing the vengence connection.

2) I voted "Down the Rabbit Hole" as the top choice myself because it was well produced, covered a internet history perspective that is not common, and was produced by an outsider. I do like to promote outside works that deal with the fandom in this way because it helps show them that we appreciate those efforts.

I'm not going to have any shame in that those intra-fandom didn't produce better, I'm just glad someone extra-fandom was able to do something good.

3) I kind of called SonicFox's victory, and I think there is something to be said about a certain ambiguity of the category of this award. Were we voting for the quality of the fursuit or the quality of the person wearing the fursuit?

I'm going to say that this has shown the fandom may be voting on the later when making their decisions here. And at that point if we're instead asking for the content of a fursuiter's character to be awarded, then why are we only allowing the furs that own fursuit to be praised in that way?

I suspect that if such a thing continues that the category is going to cause some contentions with the fursuit designers themselves and they will see it as a cult of personality test of the wearer, rather than a fair analysis of their craft. Thus, they may develop their own awards like the writers (Coyotl), though to do so they'd need to develop a guild. Which would be cool to see.

Sonious — Mon 27 May 2019 - 22:36
#8
Your rating: None Average: 4 (4 votes)

No major surprises this year from my perspective, closest surprise was Culturally F'd. Given the controversy DogPatch was suffering at the time of voting I was guessing that they wouldn't take the magazine slot for 2018, though which one was going to be the top.

While of course I would like to have Flayrah win, the fact that there are strong contenders to fill it out is great. I don't think every category had that.

Patch Packrat — Tue 28 May 2019 - 04:34
#9
Your rating: None Average: 2 (3 votes)

https://youtu.be/J-GkwIRbLw8

You all need to advertise more... I link Flayrah lots but can't go that far :)

Rakuen Growlithe — Tue 28 May 2019 - 00:25
#10
Your rating: None Average: 5 (3 votes)

Best Non-Fiction Work went exactly as I thought it should!

I picked the winner for Best Published Illustration but my choice of second and third were swapped.

I had the top 3 for Best Website but with a slight change in order.

I also got the top fursuit pick as well as one runner up.

Overall, not too bad. I think it's the closest my picks for the Ursa Majors have been to the actual results.

"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~

Mink — Tue 28 May 2019 - 02:40
#11
Your rating: None Average: 5 (3 votes)

Hey everyone out there! Did you vote? Thank you! Did you NOT vote? Shame on you!

Vote!

Anon (visitor) — Sun 9 Jun 2019 - 02:10
#12
Your rating: None Average: 5 (2 votes)

Anyone want to take a guess at what could be nominated in the Ursa Majors? I believe How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and Avengers: Endgame are locks for Best Motion Picture. Detective Pikachu could be a wild card depending on how the rest of the year goes. Anyone have any ideas?

2cross2affliction — Sun 9 Jun 2019 - 16:38
#13
Your rating: None Average: 2 (2 votes)

This week's SLoP 2* is probably a contender and could win it all (the first one was popular, I think, and just had the unfortunate luck to come out behind Zootopia), and probably The Lion King is a safe bet for movies. I also think Detective Pikachu is safer than either HtTYD 3 (too early; "wait, that was this year?" factor) or Endgame (maybe not "furry" enough for some?), because Pokemon is always popular (and my only non-movie guess is Pokemon Sword/Shield for video games). Wild card slot goes to Cats.

*Secret Life of Pets

Anon (visitor) — Thu 13 Jun 2019 - 21:02
#14
Your rating: None Average: 5 (2 votes)

Considering the "meh" reactions even general audiences are having with SLoP 2, I'm doubtful on that one. Toy Story 4, on the other hand (or paw), is getting much better than expected word of mouth. Lion King may also not be that safe of a bet because of how many are not too kind as of late on Disney live-action remakes. Those last few words are now being considered sacrilege by some, though the movie itself could still genuinely surprise people.

As for how you think the others may not be so hot, you may have a point on How to Train Your Dragon 3, but Endgame is way too big of a movie to go unnoticed. Trust me, that raccoon is popular. Oh, and let us not forget Frozen 2. Like it or not, it is the sequel to an Ursa Major winner, so it may at least have some chance. It will still depend on audience's reactions, however.

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