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3-15-15 Furfunding Highlights
Illustration from “Odd Animal Alphabet,” on Kickstarter
(Unreasonably cute picture of Corbeau by Lizbeth, on FA and on Patreon!)
This week has been just crazy. Besides work being a madhouse, the last two weeks have seen a run of really superlative furry projects popping up. I’ve been able to write some incoherant notes about Tribes of Kai, the epically awesome feline-taur graphic novel (and I’m generally a canine person, but I will make an exception here.) And I’d had advanced warning on the all-Anubis erotic anthology from Dark Natasha and friends, “Dark Desire.” I was braced for that.
And then…
I stumbled across Vanguard, a furry tabletop RPG with a strong sci-fi setting and pretty solid artwork, it’s not amazing but for RPG material, it’s strong. This one’s next on my to-do list, it looks really pretty (and I pretty much write up every furry tabletop RPG, TRPGs are my other fandom.) I found that one on FurAffinity, missed it completely on kickstarter. It has Space Badgers.
Next on my to-do list, “Wizards of the Wild,” a charming–heh–card game featuring anthro wizards battling it out. And a magic badger. There are so many things I want to dump money on this week. Money would be helpful right now. Maybe the overtime fairies will sprinkle me with their horrible dust again.
three items that I really want to cover but may not get around to, just because they’re a little off topic or small focus: Goldenwolf’s werewolf romance novel, “Hunger,” and the stupidly cute children’s book, “The Grumpy Unicorn,” which has a round little unicorn who leaves a trail of dejected rainbow wherever he goes, and really wants to be a griffon. Since it’s a kid’s book he probably learns a valuable lesson, but being a griffon is kind of a noble thing, too, isn’t it? Anyway, the cute factor on this one is sky-high. And a part of me–the part that values variety more than common sense–wants to do a short and loving write up of The Party Animals, and their absurd, face-painted kiddie romp. I think my readership is a little too post-ironic to appreciate them, since their target audience is ages 2-6, but they are clearly romping in fuzzy animal tails, and that makes them cousins!
My mate came into my room, looked at “The Party Animals,” snorted, and left. I don’t care. I think they’re cute.
So…if I don’t give these wonderful projects the write-ups they’re due, I just want to say, they really were wonderful.
Thank you to my friends who donated toward’s Folf’s lung transplant surgery! I’ve got a few poems to work on too :)
Reviews this week: Anubis-themed erotica collection “Dark Desires,” barbarian fantasy ‘taur feline action comic “Tribes of Kai,” and Russian space opera manga webcomic “SpaceRamblers.”
For a “complete” list of furry/fur-friendly crowdfunding projects, check out the Project Page and Patreon Page!
New Projects
Adult
Dark Desire (Ends: 4/5/2015)
An expansion of the erotic Anubis-themed comic series from the early 90s, with art by Dark Natasha, Heather Bruton, Terrie Smith, and so many more.
Goal met! Page is worksafe, but the product is adult.
Animal Portrait Drawings (Ends: 4/3/2015)
Weirdly realistic kicstarter-commish project: pets in formal wear portrait series.
Retro Video Game Movie Posters (Ends: 4/4/2015)
Cute and mostly furry-content movie poster versions of classic video games.
This project has amazingly little traction, considering the art quality. I thought it was a good joke, anyway. Poor joke.
A Dream of Dragons (Ends: 4/6/2015)
An illustration series of elementally themed chinese dragons
This is just a BIT “van art” to my eye, but it did make goal!
Books/Print
Hunger (Ends: 4/2/2015)
Werewolf supernatural romance novel written and illustrated by Goldenwolf
Het Nieuwsgierige Vosje (Ends: 3/28/2015)
The crazy cheerful story of The Curious Fox, which I believe is primarily Swedish. But supercute.
The Party Animals (Ends: 4/4/2015)
A kid’s music series with highly excitable people in fuzzy animal facepaint and froofy ears
This has cute make-up, but I am too old for this kind of forced jollility :)
An Odd Animal Alphabet (Ends: 4/7/2015)
Sweetly detailed illustrations of corner-case animals in the alphabet.
H had better be for hyena or I’m writing my congressman.
The Grumpy Unicorn (Ends: 4/10/2015)
A completely cute and super-surly unicorn trying to make his way and find his joy in a world of scary mythologicals
I JUST WANT TO PINCH HIS CHEEKS
Chairman Meow (Ends: 3/26/2015)
Tee and poster propaganda promoting our glorious kitteh leader
Cyborg Penguins (Ends: 4/8/2015)
Action comic with colorful chromed penguinbots, very flash and realistic (if that word can be applied)
Very “Image” feeling comic.
SpaceRamblers (Ends: 4/9/2015)
A sci-fi webcomic with a hefty slice of Space Opera. And pandas. Lots of pandas this week.
Tribes of Kai (Ends: 4/10/2015)
Amazing action/fantasy graphic novel with barbarian feline ‘taurs locked in battle with angry lizard people
Oh boy. Hot, hot lions. I really want to back this one. Also a sketch by Boris Vallejo!
Battle of the Blood Moon (Ends: 4/13/2015)
Werewolf apocalyptic graphic novel. Nicely drawn!
Sprocket the Comic-Cat (Ends: 4/14/2015)
Celebrating the life, adventures, and green radiation fists of the official mascot of Lilac City Comicon, Spkane, Washington
Squirrel: Comedy Short (Ends: 4/3/2015)
Comedy short: After a cop pepper-sprayed a baby squirrel (true story), a local mom becomes a little bit obsessed with righting this wrong.
Be warned, there are rubber squirrel masks behind this link.
Midnight Mares (Ends: 4/5/2015)
A pony-inspired (but not explicitly MLP) story of ponies and the realms of dream and nightmare, night and day.
Kennel Combat (Ends: 4/4/2015)
Dice-and-cards game of cats vs dogs.
Squirrel Ascendancy (Ends: 4/5/2015)
A little set-building card game about squirrels going to war.
No chance of this meeting goal, but if you like squirrels the art’s fun
Vanguard: Varmisk Fallen (Ends: 4/9/2015)
Sci-fi adventure tabletop RPG with SPACE BADGERS, and other lesser anthro races.
Wizards of the Wild (Ends: 4/9/2015)
A dice-and-cards game of magical animals in wizardly combat.
Oh mi gosh, the art in this! Every wizard is a different furry character with a different visual style. Wow.
Pandante: Light and Dark (Ends: 4/11/2015)
A gambling and bluff game like Texas Hold’Em Poker, but with pandas, and snacks.
Last Kitten Standing (Ends: 4/17/2015)
Action-comedy card game with derptastic kittens and a “try not to laugh” mechanic.
Rise of Vorehemoth (Ends: 5/1/2015): Fund the monster film pair of Rise of Vorehemoth and Vore King. Giant monsters eating scantily-clad human females.
What’s Corbeau Backing This Week?I’m still crossing my fingers that “Inkwip,” leather arm-bands for writers with pens built in, will reach goal, but maybe it’s best if it doesn’t and I get to keep my pledge. Because I just spent my rent on Anubis: Dark Desires, lured by my two great passions of naked canines and bowling shirts. I’m seriously on the edge on Tribes of Kai, which is so very pretty. Maybe I should pay my credit card bill and THEN make purchasing decisions.
Voting for the 2014 Ursa Major Awards now open
Shh, im breaking in to steal those poptarts
Hello to the UK Furs! - Especially the ones near Shropshire
Howdy,
Any furs in the UK out there want to talk to a silly little blue briefs wearing puppy from Shropshire?
As much as I love all my fur friends all over the world I would love to get to know the local community better... but kinda shy to goto a meet and be in a big group.
Feel free to say hello or if you have any questions & would live to chat more!
submitted by PuppyMoof[link] [2 comments]
S4 Episode 11 – Caring for the not Pretend Animals - Roo and Tugs discuss the ins and outs of pet ownership - what it takes to own a pet, some of the hidden surprises, things not to do with pets, and more! We also read your emails and discuss your advice
NOW LISTEN!
Show Notes
Special Thanks
Velox
Leo the Artist
Degen
Leon
Smokescale Aquatos - happy first anniversary, Space News!
Music
Opening theme: Fredrik Miller– Cloud Fields (Radio Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. ©2011 Fur What It’s Worth. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)
Space News Music: Fredrik Miller – Orbit. USA: Bandcamp, 2013. Used with permission. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs)
Mailbag: Eskadet – Back To Kyoto ; from the album “Solitudes” (Lemongrassmusic, 2010) – www.lemongrassmusic.de – Used under license.
Closing: Fredrik Miller – Cloud Fields (Chill Out Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. ©2011 Fur What It’s Worth. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!) S4 Episode 11 – Caring for the not Pretend Animals - Roo and Tugs discuss the ins and outs of pet ownership - what it takes to own a pet, some of the hidden surprises, things not to do with pets, and more! We also read your emails and discuss your advice
"Fursonalizing your Fursona" - Making a Well Blended Hybrid
Part 2 of my "Helpful tips for people looking to make something more than a cookie cutter character". Again, there is no definitive way to making a character, this stuff is just meant to help you think of ideas.
In this part, we'll discuss the murky waters of hybrids. Notorious for being "special snowflakes", "attention grabbers", and just in general being very slapped together, it's a real treat when you find those hybrids that have actually been blended together.
You don't make brownies leaving the batter like this. You mix it up well, and it looks delicious. Making a hybrid character is somewhat the same way. Yeah, you /could/ put demon wings on your werewolf, but what if you made those wings look a bit more fitting? Like they're supposed to be there?
The second person who I chose from my older post a couple days ago is /u/pretzelbagel (which may not be a surprise, I was very fond of the suggestion right away).
How about a hyena/oriental dragon hybrid? I bet he'd be a hit at parties! :3
Part 1: Referencing the First Species
Oh goodie, that "R" word is back. Yep. So Hyenas are pretty similar to wolves, huskies, and foxes right? I mean, yeah, sure, they're quadrupeds, with carnivorous diets, they look a little like dogs? They must be canines!
WRONG.
Hyenas are actually far more distant from canines than foxes are, and foxes aren't quite similar to our pet Fido either. Hyenas, surprise, are actually branched from Feliformia....otherwise, cats. Now, they're still quite a bit different, but Hyenas are classified much further from dogs than cats.
Why am I explaining this? Becuase that's what you're looking for when you reference species. What makes a species look like that species. You don't want to accidentally make your hyena look like a husky...
I wasn't as familiar with hyenas as I'd like, so I'm showing you one of I think four pages of reference, and what I learned about their defining characteristics are:
*They have very heavy heads, rounded muzzle, and a very flat face. Fun fact, their muzzle is a little shorter than I thought it was.
*Their zygomatic arch is rather emphasized, almost giving their faces a skull-like appearance at times.
*Big ears. Ears that reminded me more of a big cat like a lion.
*Their necks. They have a very interesting shape, having tall shoulders, and then lowering their heads giving their neck a triangular shape. Spikey mane is obvious.
*Their shoulders are tall, their haunches (read: butt) is short. Huehuehue.
*Round bellies, it's really fun to draw.
*HUGE PAWS. THEY'RE GREAT.
And if you think I'm being really picky, you may notice some very familiar cartoon hyenas who have the same characteristics emphasized.
Now, in the image I linked, the bottom right image has a couple question marks. I noticed something when I drew from an image with a wide open mouth. Hyenas have these strange little gum protrusions on their lower jaws. More on this later, it was useful.
Keeping all of this in mind, I move on to species 2...
Part 2: Referencing the Second Species
So, in the case of having one real species and one fantasy species, I usually draw the fantasy one second. With the practice and warming up of the first species, I'm ready to draw something that /doesn't exist/. And of course, because it doesn't exist, there's usually some wild interpretations of this.
Oriental dragons is an umbrella term for several types of eastern dragons: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. So I looked up each one specifically, looked at ancient art, and gathered what I could.
The typical stuff, of course. They have long bodies, with fish-like scales. They usually have manes, and four limbs. Each paw has either 3+1 or 4+1 claws, depending on what region the dragon is in. There's usually a pearl involved, whiskers, big fluffy eyebrows....you get the idea. I wont go into this like the hyena thing.
I wasn't really looking to be super fancy with these ones. They don't exist, so no real need for me to direct reference anything as long as I find those features I want.
Part 3: Doing the Ugly
This is THE WORST STEP. Seriously. This is the step that I sometimes draw on separate sheets of paper that aren't in my sketchbook because stuff from this step looks so bad.
This is where you get your first ideas on paper. They will be awful. Because you don't know what you're drawing yet, just know it's okay for this to look bad, but you need to get those ideas to paper.
This one I linked is my first and only page from this step...normally I go into two or more pages but the second page actually got the idea I went with. This being the first...the two on the left were the first things I drew. They are awful, hideous, and boring craps.
Like, I'm trying to shit a lump of gold here but this is just normal brown shit.
Get the normal shit out, the gold is on its way.
Again, you don't want to go with your first idea. If it's the first thing you thought of, there's a very good chance it would be one of the first things other people would think of, making it less unique and quite a bit more boring.
Part 4: Find the start of your idea, and go further
This is page two of my idea craps, and I was lucky with that sketch on the top right. I was very pleased with the overall design, that I started working with it.
Remember those gum dangly things from the hyena references? Look what I did with them! Use this stuff to your advantage! You never know what you can come up with if you take everything on the table and play with it.
Part 5: Go into detail, start building your new species up
I had a couple pages for this, but this was about where things started getting solid. You should attempt to draw the full body of the hybrid at least once during this step, to make sure everything is working, and then start looking at what you can detail further.
NOTE: I never draw hybrids as anthros right away. Doesn't mean you can't, but here's why. Anthros are humanized versions of animals, so you sometimes lose out on anatomy things the animal had. I treat hybrids as animals first, anthro them up second.
Maybe the paws can have those smoky wisps that some korean dragons have?
Maybe it'll hold a pearl in its mouth?
What if I did some fun stuff with the mane to make it not the usual "on the jaw, on the back of the neck"?
Part 6: Color palette out the ASS
DRAGONS ARE COLORFUL. HYENAS ARE NOT.
So what the hell do I even do?
Now, I admit I didn't save a copy of this image before I redid some of the colors, I actually had more natural tones on another layer and deleted it without saving, and went ahead with the more colorful stuff. Good thing I wound up choosing one of these to move forward.
Oh look, there's a color picker on the bottom, and it has...numbers? What gives?
Well, here's a look at how I deal with colors.
This is the region I select MOST of my colors from. Like, 80% of my colors come from here. I try not to get too wild with it, but I'm a huge fan of muted colors over vibrant ones.
My second favorite region for colors, I go here for accent colors. I use muted colors mostly for everything, but when I need some kind of an accent that's a bit brighter, here's where I go.
I'm not a fan of vibrant darks, but I have rarely dabbled into here.
Everything else is a no-go for me in character design....anything really. That's personal preference, but you should really understand your colors before wildly choosing everything you can.
Part 7: Accessorize like a High Schooler
I have no drawn image for you on this one. I probably should have, in hindsight, but my strong point has never been inanimate objects.........actually now I really should have done it lol.
With a design in mind, and a grasp on my colors, this is where I look to personalize the character even further. At this point, this is where you sit down and think to yourself "How can I make this ME?".
You can look, again, at your interests, hobbies, or maybe some things from other animals that are cool to you. Maybe you like a certain type of flower and want to incorporate it? Or what if you REALLY like crystals and want to make this thing just bleed gems.
In my case, I really like ancient Japanese history and mythology. Before going further, keep in mind I chose a lot of this out of AESTHETICS, I just like how some things look.
I started out with Shinto Shrines. These things are awesome, and one of the reasons I really want to go to Japan one day. They come in all shapes and sizes.
They are so cool and...wait. WAIT I LIKE THOSE TOO.
Seriously, these are the bees knees in a design perspective. If there's ever been something that I've ever wanted to walk through REALLY. BADLY. It's one of these handsome gates. Plus, red's a cool color, and these are very often a beautiful shade of red.
Wait. WAIT. What is THAT?
A Shimenawa, otherwise known as EXACTLY WHAT I WILL DRAW.
Shimenawas are actually really cool. I played dumb but this is one of my more favorite things in old Japan. If you think all shapes and sizes applied to shrines, you have not yet seen the sheer size of how big these sacred ropes can be.
Plus, I think they looks absolutely incredible, especially when placed on trees and rocks
That's it. That's what I want to draw.
(sorry that was a huge section, but that's how you might want to consider looking for ideas. Let your thoughts flow, sometimes you'll wind up in awesome places.)
Part 8: Finalize the Design
/u/pretzelbagel This character is now yours, as is the character sheet. Do what you wish with him/her. I may draw it from time to time.
And this is where we come and take our newly made species and make it an anthro. This is where all of that playing around, looking up cool stuff, and mixing that brownie batter into delicious goodness comes down.
I run back through my color palettes and take what works, and doesn't work. In this case, I couldn't decide between drab colors or colorful colors, which is fine because yo, it's a hybrid. Porque no los dos?
I didn't feel the need for many markings, because Oriental Dragons have some very classy patterns as it is. Hyena spots were an idea early on, but I decided very quickly that they would probably clutter it up too much.
If you managed to read through all of this, you've earned yourself a cookie.
If you've felt this helped you, then I got what I wanted. Character design is SO MUCH FUN, but it works best if you don't go with the easiest path. Sometimes the cool stuff is just another thought away.
submitted by Sareii[link] [11 comments]
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/r/Furry Social Thread #9
Hello furfriends! It's been another long week of stressful work and whatnot. I, at least, am finally on Spring Break and loving it. Sadly, however, Spring has yet to melt away the snow here.
Anyway, rules are the same as usual:
Be nice to people
Try not to be too graphic(we've got some youngsters in our midst)
Have fun!
Topic to get you started off: What are you looking forward to about Spring? Obviously feel free to post your own questions or whatever too. This is simply a place to be a sociable group :D
submitted by heughcumber[link] [76 comments]