Ursa Major Awards open for 2023 nominations
The Ursa Major Awards for the best furry content of 2023 are now open for nominations! Anyone can nominate works from inside or outside the fandom from January 20 to the end of February 17, 2024. After the nomination period has closed, voting will run from March 1st to March 31st.
This year there are fifteen categories! You don't have to enter nominations for each one; just the things for which you want to show your appreciation:
- Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture
- Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Short Work
- Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Series
- Best Anthropomorphic Novel
- Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction
- Best Anthropomorphic Other Literary Work
- Best Anthropomorphic Non-Fiction Work
- Best Anthropomorphic Graphic Story
- Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip
- Best Anthropomorphic Magazine
- Best Anthropomorphic Published Illustration
- Best Anthropomorphic Game
- Best Anthropomorphic Website
- Best Anthropomorphic Costume (Fursuit)
- Best Anthropomorphic Music
If you're looking for ideas on what you can nominate, the Ursa Majors website also has the 2023 Recommended Anthropomorphics List. Nominations are not restricted to things on this list! There is way more furry content out there. This list is put together from fan submissions, so it will always be incomplete - but it's a convenient starting point to discover things you might not have heard of otherwise.
Note that Fursuit nominations require (1) a link to a good photo taken in 2023, (2) a note of where the photo was taken, and (3) credit given to the fursuit maker.
Comments
Gotta get on the animation review this year. Will probably be next weekend, as obviously lawmakers starting the year off dumb for this week's article. I've noticed the recommended animations this year are all quite strong.
But some of the most fun aspects is when Google starts making suggestions of animations done for the year that is not listed and some of those were good too. We'll see if any of them are in the top 11.
Neat one I saw earlier last year that I completely neglected to suggest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f--ZywtWNYQ
We all dropped the ball on getting The Boy and the Heron in the recommended list.
I assume we just all assumed it was already in there, so nobody actually bothered to recommend it. At least, that's my excuse.
(You can still vote for it; I already did!)
I dropped the ball on making the post that the cutoff for the 2023 reading list was coming up. (I've been dealing with some medical issues for the past couple of weeks. Hopefully nothing serious, but it's been distracting.) Now I have to refresh my awareness of recent media... in basically everything!
If I may say something, reason I didn't personally consider The Boy and the Heron is because the titular "Heron" is essentially a guy in a suit. And I just feel weird counting that as really "furry" or "anthro."
That ain't a knock on the film as a whole, just why I didn't consider it for an anthro award compared to other potential films.
That's a reasonable position. It's not like they don't have the money to genetically engineer something better. Heck, they seem to have grossed $167m on that film, even without it. Of course, most fursuiters are just guys in suits, too - or the occasional girl.
With the amount of publicity that it's had over the past year, how the heck did Baldur's Gate III not make it onto the Recommended List?
BG3 is more about aliens and zoomorphic humans than anthropomorphic animals per se; certainly it contained examples, but primarily as minor/enemy NPCs or via use of "speak to animals". And yes, there's the Dragonborn, but as one pithily put it, "Dragonborn are scalies". Perhaps if they hadn't cut Helia? Or had a tabaxi?
You're not gonna make me go into a loud "scalies are anthro characters too!" rant are you?
"Anthro" was a mistake. What's so great about being human-like? We should preach the glory of the fur.
...anyway, it's better to focus on potential recommendations for this year, rather than the ones we missed.
It's either a Boy and the Heron thing like I described in another comment, where everyone just assumed it was already on the list without actually checking, or, well, I remember The Elder Scrolls series not actually appearing on the list despite having multiple playable animal people options until I recommended the vampire/werewolf DLC and then everyone remembered it and it won the Anthropomorphic Game that year (which drove Sonious nuts, but anyway); furries seem to forget that kind of big, expensive and popular Western RPG until they are reminded.
A couple of things that aren't on the 2023 Recommended List:
Motion Picture:
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
Dramatic Series:
I've always been a fan of the No Evil series, although for the last while it's been a little dark. The 2023 episodes don't all feature the anthro characters in a big way, and the one that features them the most (Episode 47) - has some signficant and worrisome changes to the personality and physical form of one my fav characters. Still, I'm hoping the series can get more recognition!
Visual Art:
I was really happy to rediscover the work of Stasis_Delirium recently! Two notable works of theirs from 2023 are Sentinels and Gift.
Magazine:
Fur Times
Global Furry Television
Guess I'll join the chorus and add in some of the items that were not on the Recommended List that I think should be:
Movie:
The Amazing Maurice, directed by Toby Genkel and Florian Westermann, January (North American release)
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, directed by Steven Caple Jr, June
Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, directed by Cal Brunker, September
Baby Shark's Big Movie, directed by Alan Foreman, September
Under the Boardwalk, directed by David Soren, November
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, directed by Sam Fell, December
Series:
Paw Patrol, created by Keith Chapman, February 17 - July 17
Spirit Rangers, created by Karissa Valencia, May 8
Graphic Story:
Beneath the Trees, Where Nobody Sees, written and illustrated by Patrick Horvath, issues #1 and #2, IDW Comics
Animal Pound, written by Tom King, illustrated by Peter Gross, issue #1, Boom! Studios
Capwolf and the Howling Commandos, written by Stephanie Phillips, illustrated by Carlos Magno, issues #1 and #2
General Literature:
Howard the Duck One-Shot, written by Chip Zdarsky, illustrated by Joe Quinones, Marvel Comics, November
It's Jeff! One-Shot, written by Kelly Thompson, illustrated by Gurihiru, Marvel Comics, November
Marvel Unleashed trade paperback, written by Kyle Starks, illustrated by Jesus Hervas, Marvel Comics, November
Rocket Raccoon: Marvel Tales trade paperback, written by Bill Mantlo, illustrated by Mike Mignola, Marvel Comics, November
Game:
Baldur's Gate III, developed and published by Larian Studios, released August 3
Since we're considering work for nomination, here's a list of Flayrah's stories in 2023. The Recommendations should probably cite dronon and Sonious as editors, too; Sonious had 144 edits that year (including his own story revisions), I had 36 and dronon 26.
As for Inkbunny... we got new hardware, including a new cache server. I still need to write up full details off the new main server; we got it resizing images on the iGPU, freeing up an already-faster CPU. We made policy changes, too - although they're unlikely (and weren't intended) to make the site more appealing to potential new users who didn't like it before, rather deal with existing members' issues - and also implemented AI rules (another area it's hard to satisfy everyone).
How on God's green earth do you intend to make your site more appealing to non-deviants?
It has a certain reputation, and hosts images (and user accounts) of known convicted pedophiles. It is probably true to say that you think that's okay
Well, like I said, that wasn't the point. There's a popular site purportedly for deviants that you might be familiar with, so I think there's a fair audience there.
What became an issue for our user base in both policy cases was not the people per se (although some single-purpose users migrating from elsewhere were part of it) but their behaviour, e.g. you can still be someone who uses an AI platform based on proprietary models, it's just not something you can upload on IB.
Some were not able or willing to moderate their behaviour, and found their ability to use the relevant site features limited. Others were. Either way the problem was addressed.
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