Feed aggregator

submitted by DanielTaylor
[link] [6 comments]

The Six Crowns is a brand-new anthropomorphic fantasy novel series. It’s written by Allan Jones, illustrated by Gary Chalk, and published by Greenwillow Books. (In the UK, the series is known as Sundered Lands.) The first book in the series, Trundle’s Quest, introduces us to a humble yet ultimately heroic hedgehog. Here’s the publisher’s description from Amazon: “Trundle doesn’t think he’s an adventurer. He’s a lamplighter. He likes everything safe and cozy, and that’s the way things are in his peaceful part of the Sundered Lands.  Until Esmeralda barrels through his door.  Esmeralda, a princess with a knack for magic and for finding trouble, is convinced that Trundle is the only one who can help her find the six crowns. Lost and scattered long ago, the crowns could unite the Sundered Lands once again. But not if the pirates find them first.  Suddenly, Trundle is on the run. He becomes a stowaway, a drifter, a thief’s accomplice, and a swordsman.Trundle may find that he is a true hero, after all . . . and that this is only the beginning of an epic journey.” Mr. Jones and Mr. Chalk also have a web site dedicated to the series.

image c. 2011 Greenwillow Books

submitted by DaSkunk
[link] [3 comments]

This topic proved pretty popular, with five different people writing in to tell us what they like! This episode is all over the place, and several of the cast members crack up on multiple occasions as topics range from Mary Poppins to bubblegum to the Holocaust to Pokemon to…well, you’ll just have to download it and listen. This one defies description, even going so far as to make Kyo do the requisite writhing in the first five minutes!

Our next episode is all about that furriest of all gatherings, the convention. Do you like them? Do you hate them? Which ones do you attend? Do you have questions, misconceptions, worries about them? All three cast members of Fuzzy Logic are experienced in the convention scene to a significant degree, and we’ve got lots of wisdom to share on the topic! Also, don’t forget that we’re here to help you with any issues you may have; if you want our advice, or just to be heard, sticking with the topic is purely optional!

One more thing to note: Our next episode will be recorded on Thursday, September 8th due to the fact that Kyo will be heading out for Mephit Furmeet on the 1st. Don’t panic when you don’t see a post on the 1st!

Twitter: fuzzylogiccast
FA: fuzzylogicpodcast
E-mail: fuzzy.logic.podcast@gmail.com
iTunes: fuzzylogicpodcast

Download:
Episode 17 – Killing Time
File modified August 26, 2011 – 56.3 MB – downloaded 387 times so far

Episode 17 – Killing Time - This topic proved pretty popular, with five different people writing in to tell us what they like! This episode is all over the place, and several of the cast members crack up on multiple occasions as topics range from Mary P[...]

The Animal Frolic or Choju Giga scrolls
are wordless stories by Toba Sojo (1053-1140).
I finally found a full scan of the first of the 4 scrolls:
[link]
Know your furry heritage!

submitted by omglizification
[link] [6 comments]

submitted by neko
[link] [4 comments]

submitted by omglizification
[link] [5 comments]

In article <6h8s17pficf87q7ktfh1bplc5vcam b8...@4ax.com>
"(¯`·.¸ Craig Chilton ¸.·´¯) <[link]>"
Just the kind of person I'd expect to find you hanging out with.

I'm trying to learn how to do furry art and want to know if anyone has some good tutorials.

submitted by Squidfish
[link] [12 comments]

submitted by 123not-it
[link] [2 comments]

submitted by evilsibe
[link] [18 comments]

The highly anticipated Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has 10 races in it, including two races that this fandom would be particularly interested in. The Argonians are a race of anthropomorphic reptiles, with gills on their necks and are covered in scales. Sharp teeth line their mouths. Argonians' tails help when they swim, as they glide underwater like a fish. The Khajiiti race is made up of several subtypes with very distinct appearances. All Khajiit are feline in appearance, placing them among the group known as "beast races" by the human and mer inhabitants of Tamriel.

Today, Character preset renderings were released for all 10 races, but we've decided to just show the Argonians and Kajiit here. For the other 8 races, check out this article.

{gallery}NewsImages/Furry/SkyrimMugshots{/gallery}

submitted by obscure123456789
[link] [3 comments]

Because a little extra discussion in /r/furry never hurt anyone, did it?

submitted by querkmachine
[link] [50 comments]

submitted by HappyWulf
[link] [11 comments]

After literally years of struggling to find a publisher for their full-color graphic novel, writer Paul Jenkins and artists Humberto Ramos and Leonardo Olea decided to publish Fairy Quest: Outlaws themselves — and the result premiered at San Diego Comic Con this year. In the land of Fablewood, all the world’s favorite fairy tale characters re-live their famous stories over and over again, like puppets on a string. Then one day, Little Red and Mr. Woof decide they’ve grown tired of being enemies and decide to become friends — a little act of rebellion that turns all of Fablewood onto its ear, and brands these new friends as dangerous outlaws. The web site Comic Book Resources has an interview with Humberto Ramos talking about the Fairy Quest project up on line. It’s envisioned as a four-book series.

image c. 2011 Humberto Ramos

submitted by DaSkunk
[link] [4 comments]

submitted by omglizification
[link] [8 comments]

Author: Rakuen Growlithe

Fur Affinity recently announced a restructuring and increase in staffing. On the main site, staff acknowledged “administrator inaction, bias, and a lack of accountability” but assured users that they “truly want to fix the issues, and [are] working toward a better Fur Affinity.”

To see whether this change is going to be enough to improve Fur Affinity, I want to compare the administration structures of the three main furry art sites – Fur Affinity (FA), SoFurry (SF) and Inkbunny (IB) – plus a few details from commercial alternative deviantART (DA).

Site Users Staff^ Views/Month$ Views/Month/Staff Fur Affinity* ~700?000 (est.) 30 [20] 6?958?710 231?957 [347?935] SoFurry** 167?591 27 [19] 974?580 36?095 [51?294] InkBunny# 55?660 7§ [6] 227?490 32?498 [37?915] deviantART## >16?000?000 92 250?000?890 2?717?400

$ Page views as of 17 August from statshow.com. Note: Likely to be inaccurate, but close in relative proportions. ^ Numbers in brackets exclude technical staff.
* Users as of 26 August. Staff as of 17 August. Page views for furaffinity.net and forums.furaffinity.net.
** Users as of 22 August. Page views for sofurry.com and beta.sofurry.com. Staff as of 17 August.
# Users of 22 August. Staff as of 17 August. § One IB moderator has two accounts for technical reasons.
## Users as of 17 August. Staff as of 17 August.

Staffing levels and workload

As can be seen above, although FA may have four times as many users as SF, it has just slightly more staff, with some restricted to the forums. This shows most when looking at the number of page views per month per admin. While SF and IB are in a similar range, FA admins must handle six times the number of page views as other furry site admins. To bring the work load per admin to a comparable level, FA would need 174 – though naturally the number required will vary depending on the proportion of pure browsing to posts and submissions. FA admins must continue to do more work, as the site reports growth of 11?724 new users per month, with roughly 50 new support tickets a day (Ed: IB gets around 6).

Just because FA has a higher work load per admin doesn’t mean that they are overworked. I do not know how many page views each administrator can handle, and it might be that SF and IB actually have more admins than is required. DA, for example, copes with 10 times as many views per admin as FA. DA is a commercial site, however, with full-time employees; furry sites are run by part-time volunteers.

Although FA does have a number of problems, the admitted “administrator inaction” could have a large role to play in that. I cannot say whether FA admins are working hard enough; all I can say is that compared to other furry art sites, they still have relatively few staff.

Organizational structure

Also important to how the site is run is the structure of the administration. IB is a much smaller site than both SF and FA, with it’s staff split into administrators (2) and moderators (5). Both FA and SF have specialised staff, with the main split being administration and technical/development. FA is unique in having two site owners, although this is only after joining forces with Furocity.

FA has 30 administrative staff and SF has 19. Both sites follow the same pattern of having one or two admins in charge of various aspects and a collection of moderators for general rule-enforcing. FA has many more categories, with a head of art, stories, photography, etc. while SF and IB have a flatter administrative structure.

In addition, for FA the forum is a separate site; not all forum admins have staff privileges on the main site. SF has integrated forums, so its staff have privileges over the entire site. IB does not have any forum capabilities, just submission and journal comments.

Another split in FA is that it maintains an IRC channel (#furaffinity on irc.furnet.org) with some admins exclusive to IRC. Two IRC-exclusive admins were excluded from FA’s admin count, as IRC activity was excluded from the page views count. SF again shows an integrated site with its own chat function included as part of the site, and three admins charged to focus on the chat. As SF has all features linked, they are included as part of the main admin count; any views for the chat will also have been recorded as page views. IB does not have a chat system.

Technical aspects

FA has a technical development team of either three or four members, with different sources giving different staff breakdowns. This is much smaller than SF’s nine-member development team, eight of whom focus exclusively on development (DA has a team of 29, plus ten ops staff).

FA’s developers all have other responsibilities in the forum and/or running FA’s convention, FA: United. This is a known area of concern, and Dragoneer specifically mentioned new “coding expertise” when announcing that members of Furocity would be joining FA staff.

This is perhaps the aspect on which FA does worst, with very few changes being made to the site, or at least made public. FA’s technical development has been consistently criticised; the new user interface is three months behind its promised release date. SF2.0 is currently in public beta, though with very active development and staff posting regular updates and dealing with problems as they are reported. IB, while neither having a specific development team nor making any major changes to their user interface, regularly reports bug fixes and feature changes.

Staff conduct and communication

FA’s new staff has already come under criticism for being put in a high-level positions, despite only just having joined FA. The entire photography and written works departments of FA are formed of new admins who haven’t been on FA for much longer than a month.

At the same time, one of FA’s admins complained that existing staff hadn’t been told a lot of the information about the new admin structure. This may represent a failure to properly communicate within FA (and with the users as well, even on important issues such as the rules) which could be responsible for many of the problems the site experiences.

Along with the new staff announcement was the announcement that “we have written a new Staff Code Of Conduct which outlines requirements that all staff must adhere to.” When people asked why the Code Of Conduct was not available, staff revealed that the ‘written’ Code Of Conduct was still in draft form. If it is released, FA will be the first furry site to have released a public Staff Code of Conduct. It remains to be seen whether this is a progressive step with FA leading the way or a forced move to try and improve the behaviour of the admins.

Conclusion

FA has markedly fewer admins for its level of activity than other furry sites, though that may not represent a shortage of admins. As far as the structure of the admin team goes, FA and SF are using a very similar system, with some individuals focussed on certain tasks and others to do general maintenance. However, when it comes to technical development FA lags far behind both SF and IB in it’s ability to implement changes and bug fixes, although it has promised to work on this shortcoming. The current staff structure appears sound and it would appear that the problems with the site are more to do with apathy and poor communication, both between members of staff and between the users and staff.