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submitted by Horseguy1
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submitted by KuraiMokin
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submitted by somewhatbinary
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All the furs I meet online seem to be in some far away country. Anyone here in the UK? =)

submitted by no_know
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Because sometimes we fail to keep it classy.

 From “Cats Are Bad At…” on Kickstarter

I’m back and forth on this because I try my darndest to stay positive in this blog, so I’ll just say that there are a few projects out there that show that raw enthusiasm isn’t always going to make goal. I share them with you now. Personally, I think these are all fun projects. There’s a lot of stuff that I’d never even mention because it’s, well, boring.

These are not boring.

Dragons of Avery Isle (Kickstarter ending 2/14/15)
It’s good to have a goal. I’m not sure that $18K for a leatherette release of your first novel is the best one, but hey, dragons.

The art on this one draws me in. It’s very much in the old-school, huge eyes style, popularized by 1970s artist Margaret Keane. The dragons are much in the school of AD&D 2nd Edition’s Monster Manual (Do gold dragons smell of saffron, or does saffron smell of gold dragons? Where do we get saffron, anyway? Are gold dragons involved? What other spices can be derived from dragons? With enough exposition, will I be able to make curry?)

Strictly from a crowdfunding perspective, this one’s special. Three lines of marketing copy, an update that makes my tweets look wordy, and four screens of sample text cut and pasted from the prologue (“There are two Brass dragons, a male that they named Rolin and a female Treawin, which had dull, mottled brown scales at birth.  As time went by, the scales became brassier until they achieved a warm, burnished luster. They had supple, expressive lips.   These were very useful, talkative, fire breathing dragons.  They made their lair in the high rocky caves of the Island.”) 

I like throwing Google the occasional curve ball, so I did a search for “Brass Dragon Lips” (like you do.) Here’s a useful entry from the Drakonika dragon index, itself mostly cribbed from old Dungeons and Dragons sourcebooks.

These are the most gregarious of all dragons, and are famous for their love of conversation. They crave sunlight and dry heat, so they frequent hot, arid regions, particularly sandy deserts. They like to make their lairs in high, rocky caves.

Brass dragons have dull, mottled brown scales at birth. As time goes on, the scales become more brassy until they reach a warm, burnished appearance. Brass dragons have supple, expressive lips. These are very useful, as they like to do lots of talking. They can breathe fire.

This may be the first self-published fantasy novel with an extensive bibliography to avoid copyright infringement. I am curious about what one might use brass dragons, or their lips, for, they are useful after all. I wonder if FurAffinity has any ideas.

Drakdrek (Kickstarter ending 3/7/15)
Basic strategic marketing tip, don’t use “drek” in your project title. There are better syllables. Also, don’t do a Google image search for “drakdrek” at work, because the nearest match is “draadtrek,” which is apparently Afrikaans slang for certain special private-time games. But I digress.

There’s parts of the Drakdrek story that I can get behind, an artist/writer following her dream, a person who’s been writing since she was a teenager. That’s all cool, and we’re part of a maker fandom. Sharing your work is how you develop. That said, not everybody’s teen novel is the next “Eragon,” and not even Eragon was Eragon before three years of editing (time which Drakdrek’s creator has spent working on another six graphic novels.)

The Drakdrek kickstarter project page is very short on details, but you can learn a bit more about the universe on the author’s “about” page. I suspect there’s a little “lost in translation” here, I think the author is Hungarian. Drakdrek is a dimension higher than the there we live in, which is ruled by cosmic peacekeepers who recruit teenagers into a fighting academy as peaceful warriors preventing interdimensional war. At least that’s what I’ve gathered. At the end of the day, I’m only really sure of swordfighting warrior wolf women on demon-horses.

I don’t know…I feel bad about speaking negatively about someone’s art, because art is personal and v-e-r-y few people are born artists (my own writing at age 15? Pretty bad…). Beer is a lot more palatable after a month of brewing than it is when it goes into the keg. But when you turn your art into a financial ask, it feels a little different. I always found Furbid Horrors than Furaffinity Horrors. “Pay me for this” is a much higher standard than “I’m learning, here is where I am in the process.”

Wisdom of the Dragons: The Beginning (Kickstarter ending 2/4/15)
Actually, this one’s doing okay on Kickstarter, with 30 backers and $1000 in the bank. It’s a far cry from goal, but not a bad first time out. And the page is reasonably well-organized and presented.

WOTD:TB is a medieval fantasy, chock full of dragons. Well, dragon hybrids. There’s lion-dragons, wolf-dragons, zebra-dragons, owl-dragons (?) which just goes to show what the furry fandom has long known, dragons will hump anything that moves. Though this is a young adult novel, I don’t think it’s going to go there.

The content here is kind of disjointed, and I haven’t quite got a sense for the why of it. The writing samples are just kind of off. When I think “writing sample” I imagine a  a few solid pages of text, maybe an illustration or two–possibly even the first chapter. Enough to get a sense for the what-it-isness of the thing. I don’t recall ever seeing one-sentence writing samples, such as:

“The dragons had hoped to introduce themselves decades into the future to give this new civilization time to mature and develop their own balance and peace.” 

and

“Men in armor had begun filling the square, their swords begun beating on their shields in fear and anger.”

Out of context, these don’t really tell a story, or give me a sense of the author’s flow of language. The others are chopped up with parentheticals to try to put them back into context that they don’t stand as writing samples anymore. Every time I see something made into verbal confetti like this I have more questions about what was left out than what’s been given to me.  The overall feeling I get is a disconnection from the great conversation that is young adult fantasy literature and it’s amazing, Potter-driven renaissance. Little things like these funny fragmentary writing samples. Big things like the project creator pointing to his LinkedIn account instead of a loving page of world-building and character bios (his background as an app developer just isn’t as relevant to the story that is his Kickstarter page as, say, the history of the wolf-dragon clan might be.)

I’m not being funny here, and I wanted to be, but this is an important note for all would-be kickstarters. Who you are as a creator is as important as the project is. Authors should show that they are madly, passionately in love with writing and their world, and that they’re a long way down the trail of madness that is writing and publishing. An author who can’t fall back on their craft to show who they are may not be ready for the circus stage that is fundraising and self-publishing.

Good job on that whole light-hearted post, Corbeau. Want to try again next week? Okay. Maybe we will.

Reviews this week: First-Person Shooter fun with “RetroBlazer,” wordless feline slice-of-life with “Tabby,” and a NSFW post about adult toy startups

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For a “complete” list of furry/fur-friendly crowdfunding projects, check out the Project Page and Patreon Page! New Projects Art

Forest and Star Dragons (Ends: 2/9/2015)
Art featuring two powerful elemental dragons, nearly photo-realistic.
If you like these dragons, you might want to check out the artist’s card game and DA

Books/Print

The Lycanthrope Club II (Ends: 2/10/2015)
Illustrated novella of the adventures of a group of teenage werewolf girls. See Volume 1 at DaemonEye Publishing

Cats Are Bad At… (Ends: 2/25/2015)
A cute little cartoon book about the many, many skills that cats lack.

Children’s Products

Work for Biscuits (Ends: 2/26/2015)
Cute book series about service dogs for kids, by Laura Numeroff, author of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Clothing/Jewelry

Cheshire Cat Tees (Ends: 2/8/2015)
Tee featuring the trippy blue/purple fading feline and the “Jabberwocky” poem.
I’m kind of a sucker for the Cheshire Cat.

Comics/Graphic Novels

Globcow (Ends: 1/30/2015)
(Relaunch) An American manga comic about a little demon who escapes the underworld to earn his angel wings.

Film/Animation/Theater

The Tailless Fox (Ends: 3/14/2015)
Stop-motion plasticine animation of Hovhannes Tumanyan‘s foxy fairy tale.

I Am The One ()
Stop-motion paper animation music video from New Zealand. Very compelling! There’s a cute anthro fox trumpet-player in there somewhere.

Tabletop Games

The Kingswood (Ends: 2/18/2015)
Family-friendly tabletop game about building roads and tricking your opponent (Kind of Carcassonne, but with anthro sloths and llamas)

Exploding Kittens (Ends: 2/19/2015)
A silly “Russian Roulette with Kittens” game with art by TheOatmeal
Wow. At $3 million after four days, this silly card game is the 10th most funded project on Kickstarter ever, with almost a month left on the clock.

Schrödinger’s Cats (Ends: 2/19/2015)
The OTHER silly card game about kittens and death. Or not death. I don’t know, it’s hazy.
Poor guys. I’m sure they didn’t mean to go against exploding kittens, it’s not their fault.

MajiMonsters (Ends: 2/23/2015)
A tabletop game based on the monster-trainer anime concept. Fun artwork, if a little rough. More on the MajiMonsters website.
Although nothing will beat “Cute & Fuzzy Cockfighting Seizure Monsters” for best title…

Ultimum (Ends: 3/21/2015)
A distant-future tabletop RPG of a far-evolved earth, with anthro races and lots of web-based tools and options.
This is a bit of a stretch, but the creator has been agressively reaching out toward furries, so that’s a thing. Unfortunately the Kickstarter focuses more on tech than story.

Toys

Four Horsies of the ‘Pocalypse (Ends: 2/18/2015)
Designer toys featuring the four ponies of the Apocalypse. Fun/scary project by Big Shot Toyworks.

Video Games

RetroBlazer (Ends: 2/22/2015)
A fast-paced sci-fi/Egypt themed FPS with a great visual scheme and lots of anthros.

Adult

Playbow Toys (Ends: 2/25/2015)
PlayBow Toys (NSFW) makes detailed and realistic 3D-printed adult toys, but first, they need a 3D printer.

Alder’s Toy Chest (Ends: 3/18/2015)
Custom toy maker Aldereen gently inserts himself into the adult toy market.

…Causes

Brony-based fundraising for Wildlife Learning Center (Ends: 2/21/2015): The Wildlife Learning Center launched an Indiegogo nonprofit project for their wildlife rescue center, looking to the Brony community for support. Halfway to a $30K goal! That “meetup with Lauren Faust” probably helps…

…Meh

Dragons of Avery Isle (Ends: 2/14/2015): It’s rare to find a person who is a talented author and artist, both. I don’t think we’re there yet. But the huge-eyed dragons are amusingly 70s. Kind of the Margaret Keane of dragons.
Drakdrek (Ends: 3/7/2015): The artwork is astonishingly, delightfully bad in this 6-volume fantasy series. ProTip for success: don’t use the word “drek” in your book title.

…Coming Soon?

Lunakia’s Card Deck (Not yet launched): Artist Lunakia working on a new anthro card set, with a potential launch on Kickstarter down the road…

…Just for fun

Love Me Nice (Ends: 2/18/2015): A comic about the lives of cartoon actors and the lives characters lead off-screen. Cute monkey!
L33tStr33t Boys (Ends: 2/26/2015): The 4th album for otoku boy band L33tStr33t Boys. They have a song about pocky :)

 What’s Corbeau Backing This Week?
I love love LOVE the Electro-Swing music genre, it’s sort of what happens when Betty Boop goes techno. So I jumped on this fun-looking kickstarter for Vorteque’s upcoming ES album. Heck, I’d buy it anyway…

submitted by KuraiMokin
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Title says it all

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submitted by Fizzyotter
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1. Tell us about your most recent project (written or published). What inspired it?

If the focus is only on those that were actually completed and published, I’d have to go back a whole year to the first anthology, Tales From the Guild: Music to Your Ears. There have been more recently written things but they were so short, I’m hesitant to call them “projects”. I’d be more comfortable with “drafts”.

Anyway, that one (“Echoes from the Consort Box”) was inspired by an image of a confrontation that didn’t actually make its way into that story; the story that was published is, if anything, a prequel to what I was really starting on; it’s still in progress.

In a wider sense, the big project I’m working on now is to write a textbook for a class I’ve taught several times. I’d guess that almost nobody will actually read it and even fewer people really want to hear about that, it’s Linear Algebra. I doubt I’ll make any money off of it; the book will be more of a photocopied loose-leaf packet that I hand out to students at the beginning of the semester.

2. What’s your writing process like? Are you a “pantser,” an outliner, or something in between?

What’s a “pantser”? Like, “by the seat of your pants”? I guess I’m like that. I mentioned an image before; most of what I do is inspired by an image. This isn’t the .jpg or .gif type!   It’s one that comes when I’m either thinking of nothing in particular; hear (or mishear!) something, or think “Now how would this unfold if it were in a furry world instead of this one?” Try it: if I say “That’s not the way cake is supposed to look” and you imagine a cake, and something’s wrong with it. What, precisely, is the matter? Who made it? A lot of things can snap into place as if they came from somewhere else; you just write about it as you go.

3. What’s your favorite kind of story to write?

My favorite kind of story to write is one that I don’t think I’ll have to finish!

4. Which character from your work do you most identify with, and why?

That’d have to be Hauke von Friedrichs, the cockatrice (or basilisk, if you speak German) professor. He dates back to a very primitive time in my writing career: he’s my alter ego, my self-insertion into the furry world. As I started writing more and more, he got left out more and more, but I’ve got a soft spot for him.

5. Which authors or books have most influenced your work?

The single most influential author on me I can name is Lynda Barry. I suppose Harvey Pekar should be mentioned as well. I have a lot of authors whose work I admire and that I love to read, but I find myself stealing from those two when I turn around and try to write something.

6. What’s the last book you read that you really loved?

If I interpret this as the latest book I’ve read that has left a good impression, that would be City by Clifford Simak. It’s the book I’ve read most recently that has stuck with me. I’m a little surprised that I had never heard other people in the fur fandom talk about it. Structurally it was appealing to me since it’s several short works bound together with one theme (I think to myself “I could do that!” as I look over the very short pieces I’ve done). Simak’s stories are told as myths and legends by dogs about the mythical human race.

 

7. Besides writing, how do you like to spend your free time?

I put in a few hours at the county jail as a volunteer; I knit things and I’m trying to pick up crochet but for some reason that’s not going as well. Lately I’ve been spending too much time on my iPad raising dragons and other things (Dragonvale and Brave Frontier really sucked me in).

8. Advice for other writers?

Write a lot; write more than I do, at least.

9. Where can readers find your work?

A lot of my work is at FurAffinity. A smaller collection is at both DeviantArt and SoFurry. I do try to put disclaimers and warnings on the pieces that need them. If I do come out with something longer that gets published, hints of it probably show up at one of those places.

10. What’s your favorite thing about the furry fandom?

It seems that a lot of fandoms settle in a phase where it’s all about dressing up and costuming; sometimes it’s not even about making them, but buying them. Look at Star Trek: it seems like you aren’t really a Trekker nowadays if you don’t have a Starfleet uniform or dress as a Klingon (and speak a little of it!). Furry fandom is turning into that now: in some circles, you aren’t a furry if you don’t have a fursuit. In the words of Smashmouth, “Fashion is smashin’ the true meaning of it”.

But there are still quite a few interesting people who are creating things, whether that be writing, drawing, or creating the suits. As long as that contingent is still going strong, the fandom will remain an interesting set of people.

 

Check out Mark “Prof Hauke” N’s member bio here!

it's been about a year since i "accepted" myself as being a furry now, about a year since i first started being active here.

while i had been sniffing at this for longer than just the last year, but it was rarely more than just a quick look in incogneto mode even here on /r/furry. why? i was ashamed of the idea of being a furry, i had known the artwork (community made even) for years, untill i figured out it was a subculture, and a hobby or even a lifestyle for some. and then i got a little ashamed of it all,

why? the stigma, mostly, and while i adored the works of the fandom, i was but looking at it through a spyglass. but then something happened, i hit a rough spot in life, nothing major, a recently aquainted friend shunned me. over a little confrontation, i tried making it up to him again but alas no, i was torn, with rage and sorrow.

over the following weekend my head was a mishmash of emotions, rage, hate, sorrow and disgust, and for the first time i came here, without it being under lock and key, and i began talking with some of you people, mostly in comments, and it helped me, all the bad emotions were purged from me, as if a mental transformation had happened, i accepted myself as a furry, and a part of this fandom, and i was happy, just generally happy, and when i got my tail and began wearing that my happiness grew ever larger. to the point of people asking why the hell i was so happy all the time, regardless of the situation.

and for that i thank you. after that i have been through a lot of ups and downs, but i knew that whenever i got sad or angry, i had somewhere to go where just seeing the friendlynes and artwork on here made me feel better.

i have seen a few changes to the subreddit, a little drama (no where near as bad as i had feared) people being cheered up after life problems, the awesome and the cute of art, stories and fursuits.

and you know what, i am kinda glad that i didn't join untill i was 18. (i could have been younger with kind of the same result) for i have experienced that a lot of the things i liked when i was a young teenager, unless i like it before i got to there, i'm not really into anymore.

and a word of advice to all you people "coming out" as a furry, in reality there is only one person you need to come out to, and that's yourself, once you do that, things will go by themselves, people might slowly figure it out, or not. you don't have to come out to your parents, by "coming out" to people you make it seem worse than it is to them atleast. if you want to go to a con and you have the money left over to do so, (and you can do it safely of course) parents will usually understand that you have hobbies that you want to attend to, whether it be sports, model railways or the furry fandom.

tldr: thank you guys for a great year, you've helped me a lot, and i am looking forwards to another great fluffy year.

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Isn’t she loooooovely? Isn’t sheeeee 2014? We’re giiiving out aaawaards! So keep your eeeeaaaarballs listening!  That’s right, it’s the furballd awards for 2014…nearly a whole month past the deadline for these things! But who says we don’t eventually deliver!  As we the world collectively says “Meh” to the year gone past, we talk about the things that made us happy, made us sad and made us so angry the we all kicked our cats into the nearest fireplace. RIP Mittens (2013~2014).

If you want to give us your opinion on our awards or maybe want to give us your own 2014 awards, send it to us at furballdletters@gmail.com.

Bye for now, but not forever!

This week’s song is “S-Tier” by Flexstyle and OA.  You can find the song on OCRemix here: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03068

In the News…

Russia bans Trans people from driving: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30735673

The worlds saddest mascot: http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/01/alabama-hockey-mascot-fan-fiction

John Oliver’s Salmon Cannon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9qA8c-E_oA

 

Episode 81 – Furballd Awards 2014 - Isn't she loooooovely? Isn't sheeeee 2014? We're giiiving out aaawaards! So keep your eeeeaaaarballs listening!  That's right, it's the furballd awards for 2014...nearly a whole month past the deadline for these things!

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