More interesting news from Cartoon Brew: “Viva Pictures has picked up North American rights to the animated feature Grand Prix of Europe. The story of the film revolves around Edda, a racing car-obsessed young mouse, who must disguise herself as her idol, Ed, and take his place to compete in the Grand Prix to save her family’s amusement park. The film is a tie-in for the German theme park Europa-Park, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. The theme park has won the Golden Ticket Award eight times for being the best park worldwide.” Viva Pictures is also making quite a name for itself for distributing more obscure animated feature films. After finding success with The Amazing Maurice, they went on to bring us Dragonkeeper and the upcoming 200% Wolf.

image c. 2024 Viva Pictures

This is Part 2 of my commentary on furry conventions, in relation to geography, demographics and statistics. Reading Part 1 might provide more about my perspective and understanding this in context.

Introduction

Furry conventions are hard to organize, put together, and run. They require staff, a venue, and many other complicated things. One aspect that isn't brought up enough is something that con staff don't necessarily "need" to worry about: transportation. Besides the hotel cost, transportation is perhaps the most prohibitively expensive barrier to someone attending. The low focus on this is partially because cars are the most common (and often most convenient) way to get around in the United States and Canada. I would argue that due to the sheer dominance of the car in these countries, it's hard for a lot of people to realize just how disadvantageous cars can be - on both an individual and societal level. I won't focus much on the societal level, but I will focus on the individual level, to show why I care so much about transit, even in a furry context. I'll also talk about how it relates to poverty, and what we can do about it.

With many eyes trained upon stories such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow this weekend, I was inspired to do a small tribute piece on the B-side of Disney's version. To think; The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad mainly came to comprise this format when it was decided that making two separate features wasn't budget-savvy. It's also worth a mention that this is one of my favorite stories from childhood, and even so today.

March Grand Prix is a new full-color graphic novel for young readers, published by Capstone. It comes to us from the mind of Kean Soo, creator of the award-winning comic book series Jellaby. “March Hare wants to be the fastest and furriest race-car driver around. But first, this rabbit racer must prove his skills at the speedway, on the streets, and in the desert. With pedal-to-the-metal illustrations and full-throttle action, March Grand Prix is sure to be a winner!” It’s set for publication this July in hardcover (and then a month later in trade paperback), but Capstone is releasing a special preview edition as part of this year’s Free Comic Book Day (on May 2nd).

image c. 2015 Capstone

Amid Amidi of the Cartoon Brew uses this new GEICO commercial to ask, what is an animated cartoon and what is reality, anyway? – a meaningful question for anthropomorphic fans today.

The Kia hamsters, rodent stars of several commercials for the Kia Motors Corporation, are back in an advertisement to promote the 2014 Soul.

The ad, set to Lady Gaga's "Applause", features the three hamsters jogging, swimming, and working out on various pieces of gym equipment. At the end, emphasising the message that the Soul has been "totally transformed" with a "sleeker, sexier and more sophisticated" look, the hamsters are seen radically slimmed down, wowing the public at a red-carpet event.

The campaign was produced by Kia's long-time ad agency David & Goliath, and directed by its Executive Creative Director, Colin Jeffery. The MTV Video Music Awards (Sunday, August 25) will feature the commercial; it hits 18,000 movie screens across the U.S. on August 30.