FurStarter

A frantic first-person shooter in a colorful fusion of sci-fi and Egyptian myth…

Retroblazer

Kickstarter ending 2/22/15

Just a quick and loose look at a video game now on Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight. Retroblazer is a frantic old-school first person shooter in the “run-and-gun” style, where you’re firmly planted behind your weapon looking down your muzzle–your gun’s muzzle, that is–at a very hostile world.

The world, in this case, is what caught my eye, as it’s an eye-searingly colorful world loaded with anthro characters, although since you’re sprinting through their territory and probably gunning them down you might miss that fact.

The scenery is a sci-fi re-envisioning of Egyptian motifs, with neon pyramids, brilliant hieroglyphs, day-glo sarcophagi, and the occasional viridian cartouch that leaves an interesting purple aftermirage in your eyes for a good 20 seconds.

I’m a sucker for a good 80s color palette, what can I say.

Story! Probably the least important aspect of this sort of game, but hey.

You play the young warrior Jonas, who, something something gunblazers, something something invaded by the evil Judgment Legion, something something hidden laboratory and mysterious armor, something something Automatrons, something  GunBlazers! It’s all covered in 20% greater detail on the RetroBlazer website, but let’s be honest, if you’re interested in this, it’s probably for the jackals and possibly the giant floating pyramids.

Game play seems kind of standard for this sort of game–weapons can be forged and customized with “crystals,” the internal currency of the RetroBlazer world. You sprint through a combat-intensive environment–very quickly, this is a dash-and-blast sort of experience–with just a bit of problem solving, and a healthy number of exploding barrels, bottomless chasms, and toxic pools. You can pick up the Alpha Demo, but note that it is the alpha, and has evolved somewhat (it sounds like they might have done away with some weapons using your energy crystals as a power source, for one.)

The kickstarter itself: cut and dried, the digital release, upgrade to soundtrack. In the Cadillac levels, get yourself hidden as an easter egg, or as an avatar in the game–personally, I think I’d look great in Future Egypt, grandma was a jackal. There are a few very special, expensive rewards that stand out–design your own secret weapon and hide it somewhere in a secret room, or for a cool grand, your own hidden shrine! Neat! Not free, but neat :)

You can learn more about the game’s features, music, and artists on Kickstarter, there’s a music sample there by soundtrack composer Solatrus (and if you thought RetroBlazer had some jarring colors, click that link…) Funding’s off to a slow start, but the team will be in San Antonio for PAX South this weekend, maybe they’ll be able to share their demo and get a mid-campaign bump!

Follow @Furstarter on Twitter for dailyish updates from the world of furfunding! Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.

 

Graphic Novel: A little romance, a little adventure, a lot of cats

Tabby

Kickstarter ending 2/8/15

One awesome thing about The “Tabby” Kickstarter: this is an artist that really knows how to work the system! With articles up on at least a dozen websites–probably more than, I just stopped searching after one or two screens of google hits, but “Sidney local news” is a particularly good one, and posts on comic review sites, crowdfunding sites…some amazing saturation bombing! Remember, launching a project on Kickstarter is its own full-time job, if you’re doing it right.

It helps that the author, Stephen Kok, is pretty interesting on his own. His blog, “Creating a Graphic Novel” goes back eight years, and is chock full of interviews, guest art, artist profiles…wow. Worth a read just for the passion in the subject.

Basically the Brady Bunch with fleas

Anyway, about Tabby! It’s a simple plot, and pretty human when you get down to it–a carefree bachelor, the rakish striped cat with a half-mask, happily lives one fish to the next, until his son, Tabby Jr, falls for the kitten next door. Interestingly, it’s a largely no-talking graphic novel, with the story told through expressions and action. It’s a 60+ page graphic novel so far, though the stretch goals may expand that somewhat–the $1500 stretch unlocked an extra three-page prologue, and there’s three more stretch goals ranging up to $5000 that could expand the content further (although project stretch is always a risk, Kok doesn’t seem very interested in expanding the core project, so he’s clearly got his head around the danger of the Cult of the Stretch Goal.)

A little scope stretch seems to be the only risk here. The art is already wrapped, with only lettering left to go, and Kok has been writing an “art and creation of the graphic novel” blog for most of a decade, so he knows the process.

This is a pretty solid Kickstarter, and one that I’m going to use for a model in the future. Pledge points: digital, print, print with poster, multipack, early bird specials, and a few different “Cadillac” options for the fans with sketches, and a fun “meet the artist” opportunity if you happen to live in Sidney. It’d be a great resource for anyone working on a graphic novel to look at and steal heavily from.

Check it out! Lots of process information on the Sigmate Studio blog, and you can meet the graphic artist, P.R. Dedelis, over on Deviant Art.

Follow @Furstarter on Twitter for dailyish updates from the world of furfunding! Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.

18+ please, not safe for work. A pair of “toys” projects to fill that void in your life…

(BTW, I’m not exactly an expert on sex toys, so if I get something wrong here or cheerfully quasi-endorse shoving a carcinogen somewhere with lots of chemical-absorbing tissues, my apologies, I don’t know what I’m talking about.)

I’d be curious to know if there’s been any studies done on the market for animal-shaped sex toys. On the one paw, it can’t be the world’s biggest market, with a lot of competitors (Fetish Zone, BadDragon, Zeta Paws/Zeta Creations, Exotic Erotics, German YiffyToys, come to mind, with a host of other smaller names out there. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone, but it has never been my life goal to list all animal-themed sex toy manufacturers.  An amusing side-project or hobby, perhaps.)

So, I’m looking at a pair of projects with a long road ahead of them, because it’s a packed field, and some of the players have serious name recognition.

On the other paw, it’s a field that appreciates novelty for its own sake. And not everybody has $100-$150 lying around for a detailed piece of hardware modeled after Haruki the Very Friendly Akita with frighteningly realistic coloration when Amazon has a roughly comparable piece of plastic that maybe looks more like chewing gum than Haruki, but hey, $35.

Anyway, that’s a long, rambling way to say that even with three 900-pound gorillas in the room, wherever you are on the XYZ axis of novelty, price, and style, there’s likely to be a market, though whether it can sustain a startup? That’s a hard one.

PlayBow Toys

Indiegogo ending February 25

PlayBow is a startup by Obsydian. You can see some of her work-in-progress for PlayBow on Tumblr, the PlayBow website is a bit work-in-progress (and the contrast between realistic animal dong and cheerful cartoon background is, uh, intense.)

Her current Indiegogo: startup funds toward acquiring a 3D printer, to create the sort of detailed toys we can see on her Indiegogo website, including the feline at left and…whatever the heck the “genitacle” is from. Obsydian’s not new to the toy market, she’s done work for Frisky Beast. PlayBow itself is only a few months old, a December startup. Digital printing is her ultimate goal with this IGG project, but you can see a few of her cast-from-mold projects here.

One challenge for me is that I’m really not sure how much my very own genitacle would cost. It would be a new direction for me, I haven’t had relations with cephalopods before, but the pledge points are for discounts and coupons. Now, there’s a couple of pledge points that come with an actual thing that is a thing, but they’re in the $100+ category, and at least partially custom work. Points for going with Fixed Funding (since Obsydian is aiming for a digital printer, it makes sense to stick to that price point.)

If Obsydian makes goal, though, this may be a unique opportunity to FINALLY get a model of your zorskyroo character’s junk at an attainable price, and that is not a thing to be passed up.

Alder’s Toy Chest

Indiegogo ending 3/18/14

Now, I don’t often do this–use art from a project page in fulll but really Alder’s illustration is most of the reason I’m doing this post. Look at them. So proud! Marching eastward, as if toward war. Sexy, sexy war. Anyway.

Alder’s Toy Box is a startup project by Aldereen. This one has a unique selling proposition: Custom toys at an achievable price. A tour through his FA account has a few of his projects, like the Alek plug (Alek is a mouse, which is possibly why his friend Alder stands so much taller in the crowd scene above) and the work-in-progress of, well, now you know what a demon keeps in his pants. If he wears pants.

Aldereen’s cast pieces aren’t as polished as big vendors, the lines are a little softer and less defined than the realistic stuff. But it’s custom work, and that’s an unusual thing in sex toys.  And so much more distinctive than a MaryMouse badge. Wear one to your next convention! Imagine the delightful conversation with security!

Strictly from an editorial perspective, the project itself needs some caulk and glue here and there. At this point, it’s a project focused on custom work, but there’s very little variety in the images available. Now, there needs to be some delicacy here since Indiegogo would prefer less, not more, penis on its server. But I think the lack of variety undercuts what’s the core statement here: custom work. It’s even in the header: “I make custom toys for those that have custom needs.”

That catch phrase is awesome, by the way. It’s sharp, it’s clear, it may actually be perfect.

The rewards are a little bit busy as well, a common trap for new crowdfunders–breaking up the offer into way too many sub-categories, adding too much copy to an area that should ideally be easy to scan through. But again, it’s a first-time project.

Follow @Furstarter on Twitter for dailyish updates from the world of fur-funding! Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.

 

This week’s illustration is from the AWESOME project, “The Mutation of Atom,” on Kickstarter

Back from the holidays! Not a lot of really astonishing projects in December, it’s always a slow time, but January’s off to a good start!

From crowdfundingland, an interesting change over on Indiegogo, who’s really doing the only “new” stuff right now in the big crowdfunding names: the creation of Indiegogo Life. This new sub-site hosts what Indiegogo refers to as “what’s really important” and I think of as “crap,” the endless stream of “fund my college, fund my surgery, fund my new Playstation, fund my fursuit” (three “fund my fursuit” projects this month, no I will not link to any of them.)

What’s interesting about this site–because it sure isn’t the projects themselves–is that fundraising through Indiegogo Life is free. That’s kind of amazing!

Cynically, I believe this is an attempt to make their website more relevant and browseable by shifting the TONS of “this is only of interest to myself and my family and friends, not to you, whoever you are” to their own site. I’m not complaining. Kickstarter is slowly being crushed by the weight of fund-my-lifes they let in when they deregulated their platform. And if this has the one-two punch of lowering irrelevant traffic and improving someone’s ability to get the surgery they need? That’s great.

Reviews this week: Non-anthro MMO adventure in Isles of Eventide, and click-and-draggy arty fun with the all-in-one Furry Fandom App.

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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

Goldenwolf’s Sketchbook #2 (Ends: 2/5/2015)
A collection of old and new and unseen art from Goldenwolf, her second sketchbook project.

The Mutation of Atom (Ends: 2/1/2015)
Awesome mashup of Michaelangelo’s “The Creation of Man” and every Kaiju from the classic Godzilla.

Books/Print

The Last Kiwi (Ends: 2/7/2015)
Travelogue, war diary, calligraphic project–a hand-painted, hand-lettered log of a kiwi soldier’s fight against the stoat menace.
This is beautiful in three different ways…

Children’s Products

Waagosh and Zhigaag (Ends: 1/25/2015)
Cute anthro skunks and foxes help young children learn basic Ojibwe.
Now you have no excuse for that ‘learn Ojibwe’ new year’s resolution!

Film/Animation/Theater

Mr Meow Plus & Pilot (Ends: 12/31/2015)
Stop motion and toy of a horrible, horrible, emaciated and angry cat. Horrible, I say.

Software

Furry Fandom App (Ends: 1/26/2015)
An all-in-one community building, art-hording, and commission tracking app for artists and fans.

Video Games

Isles of Eventide (Ends: 1/30/2015)
A fascinating fantasy world MMORPG with non-anthro characters and monsters.
More at the Bloodstream Studios DA page.

Adult

Genus #96 (Ends: 1/18/2015)
Help fund the latest issue of Genus, Radio Comix‘s long-running anthro adult anthology comic.
I’m of two minds here. Radio Comix is a staunch furry ally, but this is the second time they’ve gone to the crowdfunding trough. Are we looking at a dying business model, or just the usual fund-and-presell?

Monsters & More (Ends: 1/23/2015)
A NSFW collection of sketchy watercolor monsters and strange humanoids by Coey Kuhn.
Goal reached! I have a feeling that sergal fans would enjoy this product.

…Meh

Might of Mythology (Ends: 1/31/2015): This seems to be some sort of dragon-focused art installation with sharp-edged cut-paper dragons. I’ll be damned if I can understand what the creator is saying, it sounds a little bit altered-state. Nice dragons though.

Wisdom of the Dragons (Ends: 2/4/2015): First novel in an epic fantasy something something. Wow. Normally I try not to snark, but this one’s just painful. A one-sentence writing sample that really only just proves they sort of know how a subordinate clause works (“Men in armor had begun filling the square, their swords begun beating on their shields in fear and in anger.”) Such dragons. Species names that sound like prescription medications. Wolf-dragons, zebra-dragons, lion-dragons. If I donated $500 I bet I could get hairless dog dragons. Wow.

 What’s Corbeau Backing This Week?
I was a little sad that one of my favorite podcasts, the Steampunk music show “Clockwork Cabaret,” only had a paltry $13 per month in their Patreon, so I went crazy and made it $18. Those girls have brought me a lot of joy over the years.  And went a little crazy backing The Furry Fandom App, against my better judgement (I hate flexible funding…) so here’s hoping that ends up being a thing. It’s the sort of project I want Furstarter to be on the record as supporting.

A land of predators, prey, and hidden magic…

Isles of Eventide

Kickstarter ending 2/8/15

Conceptually, I love a non-anthro MMORPG. They’re works of art–by their nature and the “dolly dress-up” functionality of the MMO genre they encourage a riot of complex fur design and species twiddling that they become more of a visual collage than ecosystem, which I think is really pretty.

My first brush with the genrette (that should be a word, if it isn’t) was–well, it wasn’t a game, more of a toy or interactive screensaver, Endless Forest, a game where players take the role of non-anthro, non-verbal deer. No chat, just prancing. There was magic, but it was mostly devoted to tweaking your character’s appearance. It was a subtle, beautiful game, and I lost a few quiet Sunday mornings to playing “look, I’m prancing!”

Looking at Isles of Eventide, a MMORPG in development by BloodStream Studios, I’m taken back to that strange, spirit-infested augmented natural world. The concept art of IOE is beautiful–you can follow the dev committee’s group gallery on Deviant Art, some of the art’s evocative of the intricate realism of Dark Natasha (such hair, many braids, wow).

IOE is set in an archipelago, a chain of volcanic islands with wide-ranging climate, weather, ecosystems, from a megafauna-infested frozen north to a fantasy forest, sandy beach, or savanna/plain setting. These islands are dotted with standing stones touched by the lingering magic of a race of ancients.

At some point in the not-so-distant past, three great clans of beasts, awakened by the magic of the Mother Tree, came across the oceans to these islands, infesting it with great cats, canines, and equines. Each of these clans has its own strengths (cats are agile and summery loners; canines are pack-oriented, enduring social beasts; equines are strong and sturdy herbivores).

Looking at the game, it seems reasonable to break the discussion down into “sandbox” and “plot.” Both are important in an MMO. We’ll look at sandbox first.

The three clans form the basis of your characters, but there’s enough variety in markings and accessories to change a wolf into a striped hyena, if that’s your thing. While this is a non-anthro game and your choice of accessories is a bit limited, through game play you can pick up armor and costume elements, learn to change your character’s body through magic (the Greater Northern Horned Wolf is an option, with the right spells and base materials). You can pick up pets, and dress and equip them–though why any sane critter would want to be a lion’s familiar, I’ve no idea. And for deep dollhouse fun, the main islands have tiny islets of their own that share their climate, and can be claimed by player characters for personal use and development. Dig a tunnel, dig dig a tunnel.

So far as plot goes, the game is spread over a series of islands, each its own game realm, with unique ecology, predator and prey species, magics and secrets, and boss monster. On a base level, some of the game is, well, being an animal–hunting deer, eluding carnivores, finding a home. Snu-snu at $100K.

Much of the game beyond that is in the uncovering of the secrets of the Ancients. Some of the runestones left behind by the ancients contain legends and stories of the ancient world. Some have spells, teaching the ancient secrets of flight, surviving in the ocean depths, and +3 Strength. Others link the islands together and allow rapid travel, and contain information about the land and its inhabitants. In their wisdom, the Ancients even created circles of standing stones to gate in extradimensional horrors, so even a top-level predator may want to be careful where they sleep at night.

As the game expands–over time, or as Stretch Goals–the oceans will become increasingly playable themselves, other islands will be added (bayou, Asiatic forest, tropical jungle, etc, each with their own secrets and challenges), and new clans will join the island (birds, at first, then we’ll see.) And an engine for heredity and reproduction will get unlocked, so, puppies.

Looking at the Kickstarter, it has a lot of what you’d expect from an MMORPG launch: backer-only in-game perks, an ebook of secrets and easter eggs, your own large islet that can’t normally be claimed, backer-only or even custom character designs (I want my cutie mark, dammit), and at the higher levels, a large island owned by your business (The Sofawolf Atoll, anyone?) and creative input on the islands themselves.

I do like this project, but it’s had a slow start. It’s a new company, and the indie game space/MMORPG playground is pretty crowded, from both a crowdfunding and market share perspective. (For anyone interested in taking a tilt at this particular windmill, I’d recommend “A No-Name Developer’s Guide to Succeeding on Kickstarter.”)

That doesn’t mean it won’t launch or succeed at funding, possibly with a modified relaunch (and some copy-editing, guys, get an English major, they’re cheap and need some love.) Given the archipelagic nature of the game–word drop, 200 points–fundraising themed around the islands might work to create a chain of smaller kickstarters, more likely to succeed. True, it’d be a bit of a lie since the bulk of cost is in game development, but it’d be a good sales story and encourage richer fan development of the islands themselves. Many project creators start small, and build up an audience of friends and followers over a few projects, and some video game’s stories are “Fail at $100,000, succeed at $30,000, re-succeed at $20,000.”

Anyway, take a look at the project. It is quite pretty, bearing in mind that it’s not completed–that’s what the money is for, after all! Good luck!

Follow @Furstarter on Twitter for dailyish updates from the world of fur-funding! Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.

An all-in-one app for furry artists, fans, and community-builders…

Morham Technologies’ Fandom App

Indiegogo ending 1/26/15

Build a better mousetrap, and…and the metaphor breaks immediately, because some of the nicest people I know are mouses.

Furry social media space is pretty crowded, with perhaps 30 sites to serve something like 57,000 furries. A lot of websites and products have tried to be the Next Big Thing for furries. FA has the weight of numbers behind it, but is weak on community building and conversation–and tech-wise, isn’t part of the discussion anymore. 2005 was a hundred years ago.   In a tech-savvy fandom where the vast majority of us carry a powerful web browser in our pocket, there really isn’t a strong app to service the community (outside of a few find-a-fox hookup apps, which may be a little too single-use.)

Enter Morham Technologies (website under construction) and their upcoming fandom app, now on Indiegogo. On the one paw, the app is work-in-progress (the working title is Furry Fandom App, but rather than abbreviate it in the obvious way I’m going to shorten to “The Morham App.”) and a lot of the images available are, also, work-in-progress. On the other paw, the developer and spokeswolf Matthew Mooneyham (alias, Lokoti Wolf) has some success in app and site development (most relevantly the recent facebook-esque social media site, furspace.net).

In a crowded market, whatever’s scheduled to be the Next Big Thing had better be pretty awesome–able to take the best from FA, Facebook, Twitter, and build a one-stop shop for furry community (and furry art, I’m not sure you can separate the two.) Having a few extra features would be a plus. And, as proposed in its project page, the Morham App delivers in spades.

You have to break down the app’s features into chunks, this burger is too big to bite into. Let’s look at in terms of social, archival, and artist functionality. (If you’d like to see the demo version of the app itself whizzing through its features, here’s a link directly to the feature tour.

Social:
In my local community, we’re served mostly by facebook and twitter, good tools to communicate with friends but not great for finding new contacts. The Morham App’s social features have community-building functionality as well as the more standard IM tools:
»Direct messaging
»Group and Forum tools
»Event posting
»Integration with Facebook for microblog functionality
Long-term goals for social networking are location-based, such as a “nearby furries” locator and conversations that are geographically centered, like creating a conversation forum and events list restricted to the city blocks around Anthrocon (“Geofencing,” it’s called).

Archival:
No furry platform could compete if its user can’t share pictures of his/her avatar dressed as Bish?jo Senshi Sailor Moon in a compromising position with two dingos and the 10th Doctor. The Morham App has post-and-share functionality for music, art, and text, with simple layout for easy viewing on your device of choice, and commenting.
»Reposting is available, great for a commission-heavy community, so the same image and comment section can appear in an artist’s and commissioner’s separate art feeds…including some analytical features to merge “accidental” duplications together.
»Content Feeds: Down the road, the Morham App will be able to collect furry video and audio podcasts.  It doesn’t seem a long journey from “repository for furry sound files” to “basically it’s a furry radio,” I look forward to seeing how that technology develops!

(As one of the double handful of furry journalists out there, I’d love to see a furry news aggregator feature. Just saying. My birthday’s in March BTW.)

Artist:
Here’s where the app shines. A portable social media and art-browsing tool is useful on its own, but the Morham App’s strongest focus is on simplifying the artist’s experience and creating clear lines of communication between an artist and her fan base:
»Commission queue, commission status, and payment management
»”Currently accepting commissions” list for followers (I’m assuming this is just the artists the user follows, not all artists.)
»Groupon-style “flash sales” (say, an artist wants to work on a series of bookmarks, or wants to offer a one-day sale on reference sheets, this makes those short-term deals “pop”)
»Adspace (early adopters through the Indiegogo campaign get “free” ad space with their sponsorship).

Anyway, enough with the features! This isn’t a complete list, Lokoti Wolf has some features he hasn’t shared, and some more in the pipeline. It’s a nice long list for a free app!

There are of course a few hurdles in a project like this. One of the big bugaboos in the furry internet is long-term funding, which is challenging for a free app or other resource. Since the Morham App is largely about artist-fan relations, the two obvious routes are ad-driven revenue and transaction fees. There’s a delicate balance between cost and value of service, here. Transactional fees are a part of the world we live in, but it’s going to be a hard decimal point to place.

The other problem is the classic “video phone” dilemma, the critical adoption mass. Until the time when everybody carried a camera in their pocket, video chats just weren’t a thing–you could buy a video phone, but unless your SO, mom, or co-workers had them, what was the point? A project like this will become progressively more amazing as  it is adopted by more users and artists, but until then, it’s a long road to success. A huge advantage the Morham App has is there simply isn’t any competition in the field of furry apps–it’s a largely empty playing field. Hopefully I’ll see Lokoti on the con circuit soon, giving it away. Sounds like a fun vendor table. “Here, have a thing! It’s free and awesome!” Nice work if you can get it :)

From a crowdfunding perspective, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Morham App comes back for a second round of funding after the software’s alpha test and feedback (I’ll be getting my own copy soon, and will add comments to this post.) A strong project would probably help it out there. There’s also some rocky issues with premiums and pledge points–there’s lots of rewards for artists, but not much incentive for casual fans to donate–or for businesses and websites that don’t fit well into a content stream. A springtime marketing makeover (tighten the video a bit, take out the 30 seconds of login screen, less talking head and more chrome, in-line graphics for the page itself, maybe lose the flexible funding…) might help launch the app to the general public during a round two campaign in the summer.

Now, on to play with my new reviewer’s copy!

Follow @Furstarter on Twitter for dailyish updates from the world of fur-funding!

Images above are used for review purposes with permission. Please link to this article or the app’s Indiegogo page if you re-use!

 

This week’s illustration is the reverse side of Pelted Primacy, now funding on Kickstarter.

This week, DJKyota’s  “Pelted Primacy” makes its return to Kickstarter. I’ve been watching this project for a few years, and it’s been an interesting exercise in adaptation. In its latest incarnation DJ has developed the artwork and is using Kickstarter for a preorder system. “Pelted Primacy” was one of the first projects I covered, in my second post. I’ve got my fingers crossed, here’s hoping this is the evolution of the project that springboards it to success!

This week saw a lot of really, really first-time projects that were a bit on the rough side. Uncertain of why–I don’t plan to bother following the astonishingly missable “Thundercats” fan film ($1mil goal, no business plan…), but some of them were so undeniably furry that I have to at least give them a nod. In particular, “Redemption” stands out for having most of a chapter in the in-line text of its Kickstarter story, as well as having only one paragraph of business content.  “Isles of Eventide,” is a nice-looking little non-anthro RPG, also suffering a bit from “first time out.” I think we may see this one again in the vague future.

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

Meimei and Po Calendar (Ends: 1/11/2015)
Japanese-style fantasy animal and human art–lots of foxes!–in a lovely art calendar.

Engineers with Puppies: A Swimsuit Calendar (Ends: 1/14/2015)
Images, please? Use that gallery function, guys! A largely self-explanatory project raising money for the Champaign County Humane Society and Techbridge, a campaign supporting women in engineering and science.
Argh, they’re using two different crowdfunding platforms. Dumb, dumb, dumb…

Books/Print

Redemption: A Fantasy Novel (Ends: 1/22/2015)
First-time novel project in an anthro fantasy universe.
I suspect including “noooooo” in the sample page was a mistake.

Children’s Products

Powerful Plants (Ends: 2/16/2014)
Okay, not strictly FURRY but nutrition education loaded with anthro plants and veggies!

Comics/Graphic Novels

RABBIT (Ends: 1/22/2014)
A graphic novel of a rabbit working as a bar-bouncer in a city of carnivores. Strange, rough, and abstract indie goodness.

Tabby (Ends: 2/8/2015)
It’s a sweet rom-com with a crazy cat lady as the main character! Great cats and nice art.
Lots of art and sketchwork on the artist’s process blog.

Tabletop Games

Pelted Primacy (Ends: 1/16/2015)
Anthro card deck by DJKyota, with character art for the court cards and unique paw-print suit designs.
It’s been interesting watching this deck evolve over time, it was one of the first project I covered here.

Toys

Squatting Dog (Ends: 1/30/2015)
If you really, really needed a miniature figurine of a shiba caught in mid-poop, the internet will provide.

Video Games

Second Chance: The Game (Ends: 1/25/2015)
Eliana-Asato‘s furry dating sim project.
Language in project page is kind of off (artist speaks Russian natively). Think that’s hurting her business case.

Isles of Eventide (Ends: 1/30/2015)
A fascinating fantasy world MMORPG with non-anthro characters and monsters.
More at the Bloodstream Studios DA page.

This week’s illustration is from the Isidore Tarot, now on Indiegogo. 

I’m a little late on this one, but it was a one-week project, and I really only check Indiegogo once a week. But it’s a neat example of using Indiegogo as a commission-organizing engine, which is pretty cool.

The project in question is Tato‘s “Toys for Tots” project. Tato’s a babyfur artist, and if an intensely sappy “Christmas at the Orphanage” style picture isn’t a place for babyfur art to shine, it’s an unjust universe.

I’ve put the base YCH at left, but here’s a link to the larger original. Like a lot of YCH images it’s busy edging into claustrophobic–in this case though it’s for a good cause and the multiplicity of bodies is a Good Thing–it’s all a fundraiser for Toys for Tots, with all proceeds going to that charity.

But let’s look at the trees and not the forest, that is after all the point of this blog. As a tool for managing a YCH project, this seemed to work well–all the character slots were claimed within five days. Awesome, and $500 or so going to a worthy cause! And Tato even used Indiegogo’s “Verified Nonprofit” process so that fees are reduced and the donations are, well, donations, so you can write off your empampered foxling.

On the downside, while she DID meet her goal (and thus reduced fees from 12% to 9%, or I guess 6.5% with the nonprofit discount), there are a few more slots available for “your name on a stocking.” The lesson seems to be that you can’t really take the “C” out of YCH, even as a charity fundraiser–there’s still a few days left though, so claim one of those stockings and prove me wrong. It’s for a good cause.

I’m curious to know why Tato went with Indiegogo instead of the possibly more lucrative YCH Bidding War that seems to be the standard model for this sort of thing. There are a LOT of characters, and IGG’s probably easier to wrangle the dollars for. On the other paw, this model seems to take away from a lot of the “oh, I want to be the one sleeping by the fire!” that’s a part and parcel of YCH-land. Though maybe that’s a good thing and saves her a few headaches.

Anyway, only three more days to fill up those stockings! Good luck, Tato!

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

 

New Projects Art

Toys for Tots (Ends: 12/15/2014)
Charitable YCH type image from Babyfur artist Tato, Santa bringing gifts to the kids.
This is a use of Indiegogo that I haven’t seen before, managing a YCH auction. Hmm. Also, all commission slots taken, it’s still interesting.

The Isidore Tarot (Ends: 2/10/2015)
Victorian/Renaissance art stylings with a strong clip art vibe in this heavily anthro tarot art deck.
I’m a sucker for tarot decks.

Books/Print

Monsters of Fear and Wonder (Ends: 1/28/2015)
Fabulously detailed kaiju artbook and field guide

Clothing/Costumes

Leaf Peeping (Ends: 12/23/2014)
Tee shirt design by Michele Light, for fox and cheesecake lovers. Also the “Candlelight” design stretch goal, for snow leopard lovers!

Comics/Graphic Novels

Globcow (Ends: 12/31/2014)
Comic about a little demon earning his angel wings, and a pig in a trenchcoat (?)
Brightly-colored, loosely pokemon-inspired manga.

Film/Animation/Theater

Mr. Sparklzz (Ends: 1/10/2015)
Web series: Three dysfunctional siblings, a witch, and a sassy cat. Live action. It’s a guy with a cat nose.
I actually do like this, it’s cute. Very “indie theater.”

Scampenstein (Ends: 2/1/2015)
Gothic horror animation and a “Dickens-meets-Shelley” animated–and reanimated–dog hero.

Panda Oki Animated Pilot (Ends: 2/8/2015)
Frenetic little manga pandas in an Invader Zim style by Anthony Jappa
Unfortunately this seems to be one of those ‘try to fund-raise without outreach by leaving the campaign up as long as possible’ pages. Oh, and flexible funding. Sigh.

Tabletop Games

Game Over: Holiday Leftovers (Ends: 1/4/2015)
80s-tastic card game with 8bit heroes colliding in a fast-moving party game.

Care and Feeding of Baby Dragons (Ends: 1/21/2015)
It’s an art book, deck of playing cards, educational resource. Everything you wanted to know about horribly cute baby dragons!

Toys

Dragon head and fantasy Challenge Coins (Ends: 12/20/2014)
Ongoing series of fantasy challenge coins, with Cerebus, dragons, and now, owlbear.
Goal met!

Shibai and Friends (Ends: 1/7/2015)
Cuddly plush shiba, pink lion, artbat, panda-mermaid. Very cute line of plushes, badges, and tags by Shibai

Video Games

Atakapu (Ends: 1/26/2015)
Speedrun platformer with a furry, three-eyed alien and his wide variety of power-up costumes. The blue wolf of doom is extremely that thing.

Adult

Kerekerd? Lakói – Újratöltve (Ends: 1/6/2015)
This is your basic obscene super-cartoony, Ren-and-Stimpy esque smut. But it’s in Hungarian, which adds an element of mystery.

Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Hentai (Offbeatr Voting Period)
Well, I really can’t describe this project better than the title, can I. Lots of sample pages.

…Just for fun

Iron Sky (Ends: 12/20/2014): Adolf Hitler rides a T-Rex into battle! Lizard people nazis! Probably the Grade Z sci-fi event of the year.
Das Fang (Ends: 12/31/2014): Shot glasses built in a fang–or possibly walrus tusk–motif. Two together? Vampire. More than that looks kind of strange.

…Meh

Teach Kids how to Save Energy (Ends: 1/18/2015): Spectacularly bad mascot suit. Worst squirrel ever. Wow. It’s coming after me with a golf club.

 What’s Corbeau Backing This Week?
Let’s see…most recently, I threw $5 at “Toys for Tots” because, pick one: 1) it’s a good cause, 2) Tato would list me as a contributor, or 3) I wouldn’t have to edit my blog post if she was over goal. I’m pledging for the Isidore Tarot now, because I don’t have enough tarot decks in my life and that clip art aesthetic, really appealing. Lastly, a dumb-but-fun “game of hilarious medical disasters” called “Medicine Whoops,”  which looks a little crude but has some fun ideas.I really wanted to back the amazingly stupid/charming Minimal Nativity Set, which would be an awesome little thing, but it was a bit expensive for what it was anyway (£23), and then there was an extra £11 for international shipping, which was just too much this time of year for a ha-ha.

This week’s illustration is from surreal Italian graphic novel/novel “La Storia dell Orso” on Indiegogo. 

Is this possibly a side effect of the recent deregulation of Kickstarter as an “anything goes” medium, or a result of their strange funding/voting model and price structure? I can’t tell. But it looks like Offbeatr, the crowdfunding site devoted exclusively to adult content, is in a state of deep fail. As of this moment, there is only one project funding on Offbeatr, and it’s only at $40 of its $1200 goal. A pretty weak showing, and that funder will have to pay something like $100 for their effort.

Hard to say exactly what this means. A more educated public really doesn’t NEED Offbeatr–its 30% fees are harsh, and a well-framed Indiegogo page can do as much to advertise your project. And fortunately or unfortunately, most of the traffic to a given project is driven by the poster, not the hosting site.

More on adult crowdfunding in the near future, promise.

Reviews this week: The latest in gryfon novels, “A Shard of Sun.”

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

Kingdom of Fur (Ends: 1/16/2015)
A 45+page art anthology book with over 15 artists.
Interestingly, all art is from DeviantArt artists? Hmm. Not sure why. Very weak response for a fairly nice product, I think the artists aren’t promoting it.

My Last Week As a Dog (Ends: 1/18/2015)
This one’s not taking off, but I like it. A book about the love and loss of an animal, through both its owners’ eyes and the dog’s eyes.
Unfortuantely no support as of 11/30.

Kyell Gold on Patreon (Patreon Ongoing Funding)
Furry novelist Kyell Gold working on his his next novel

Children’s Products

Wikiduca (Ends: 1/18/2015)
I THINK this is a Spanish educational card game with some strong Pokemon influences. It’s cute, anyway. And in Spanish.

Comics/Graphic Novels

The Questorverse Crossover (Ends: 12/24/2014)
Anthro raccoon webcomic char 11111 comes to a graphic novel with LOTS of walk-on parts.
Hmm, nearly at goal as of 11/30. Is creating a crossover between your OWN characters really a thing?

Film/Animation/Theater

Characterz (Ends: 12/22/2014)
A dysfunctional bunch of mascots at an amusement park with a broken spirit. There may very well be a montage of learning to wear the costume.

Toys

Handmade Creature Creations (Ends: 12/24/2014)
Handsome kitten-griffs made of faux fur, one of a kind pieces of art-toy.
I was really surprised to see how high quality the faux fur was here, I was sure it was real!

Animal Assasins (Ends: 12/26/2014)
Armor-wearing, killer koala designer toy.

Tentacle Kitty (Ends: 12/30/2014)
Adorbs squid-kitty, and it changes color from rediculous purple to twee pink!

Video Games

Viktor: A Steampunk Adventure (Ends: 12/19/2014)
Viktor’s point-and-click quest to become the emperor of Austria-Hungary. Cute stuff, very PBS Kids.

Adult

Unpopular Tales: Little Red Riding Hood (Ends: 12/23/2014)
An adult, eroticized retelling of the (already kind of smutty) Little Red. Not exactly furry, but there IS a wolf, no telling how that’s going to turn out.
Not terribly furry and maybe a little exploitation-y, but high quality art.

…Also by furries

Strange Worlds (Ends: 12/31/2014): A webcomic by UndeadChickenNugget. Sci-fi space comic with some nice art, pretty high quality at least prelaunch.

…Causes

No Laughing Matter: Hyena Conservatory (Ends: 12/24/2014): A study of brown and striped hyenas in Zimbabwe. Got $5000? Want to stay a week at a hyena reserve? Act now!

…Just for fun

Light Art Photography (Ends: 1/28/2015): Funding for an ongoing light art project, pretty if not original, but no support so far and perks aren’t very compelling.

A gryfon’s journey to his home and into prophecy…

A Shard of Sun

Kickstarter ending 12/16/14

It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to cover a really solid book. Thinking about it, I’m not sure I have yet, so this is a welcome project.

A Shard of Sun, now on Kickstarter, latest novel by Jess Owen (also on DeviantArt as ElementalJess,) is a story of Shard, a young gryphon—ah, gryfon—who, exiled from his home, finds strange allies (and strange enemies) in the far-away homeland of his tribe. It’s in part a coming-of-age story, the bildungsroman—oh my dog, the spellchecker corrected my spelling on that word—of a feathered hunter and just possibly a future king. It’s the unfolding of a prophecy, and a war between cultures. Cover art is by the talented dragonist Nambroth, though Jess herself is pretty good with a stylus.

Now, this is the third book in a series, so it’s worth taking a moment to look at the story so far. Here there be minor spoilers, but these are mostly back-of-the-book type blurbs from Amazon, so they aren’t the most spoilery of spoilers, and forgive me for being reductionist–if you’re interested, I’m linking the illustrations to the Amazon book pages, so you can blurb to your heart’s content there.  Anyway skip ahead a bit if you wish…

Book 1: Preview Chapter available!

Song of the Summer King is a coming-of-age novel, first in the “Summer King Chronicles.” Shard the Gryfon is old enough to participate in the hunting and fighting of the older…pride? Flock? Someone throw me a collective plural, please. He befriends a she-wolf,  a race usually hostile to the gryfons. Threatened by the younger male’s growing strength, the red king of the gryfons declares war on Shard’s allies. As lines are drawn, Shard must choose—fight beside his king, or against his own kind?

The general tone of the reviews of this book are positive–it’s an immersive world, a great romp from the hunter’s perspective. One reviewer said that the experience reminded her of Avatar, the sort of rich world you can get lost in. I leave that as an exercise to the reader, sufficed to say world-building is a strong point in this series. Amazingly, Song of the Summer King walked away from Amazon without any reviews under three stars, after over 100 reviews–I didn’t know that was even possible!

Book 2:

Skyfire, the second book, begins with Shard as a gryfon in exile, tryingto make sense of his past, of a packflocktribe lead by an unjust king. He learns of the legend of the Summer King, who is destined to bring peace and balance—

Okay, editorial insertion here, I’ve read my Golden Bough, I know a bit about the pagan tradition of the Summer King—what I know about the Summer King is it’s a great gig, but you do not want to be him in the winter. I’m curious to see how that plays out, and the ultimate cost of Shard’s quest for peace and balance.

Anyway, his quest takes him across the sea to the gryfon’s homeland, and to two generations of unresolved family hostility. Which takes us to Book the third.

Book 3:

A Shard of Sun picks up with Shard as the proud caretaker of a young dragon, putting him in a conflict between his own potential destiny in the quest for the mantle of the Summer King. He begins a journey to return the dragon to its family, a journey that wins him only the mistrust of the dragons. Meanwhile, in Shard’s homeland, his wingbrother looks to find Shard and reconcile some old differences, and the Red King is hunted by the warrior, Caj…Basically, just never leave home, it only leads to grief. Word to the wise.

Book 4: To be announced, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be about gryfons.

There’s a lot that’s remarkable about this series, really, zarking amazing. Bearing in mind that Song of the Summer King was a first novel, the comments on Amazon for book 1 and 2 have been quite positive, no reviews under three stars. I’m stunned, I didn’t believe that was possible in this cynical world. The first two books in the series were both successfully crowdfunded, and with almost a month left on the clock it looks like A Shard of Sun will be three for three–three projects launched, three successes. Again, remarkable.

I almost feel tacky for criticizing a successful Kickstarter dynasty, but what the heck, it’s what I’m paid for (I’m not paid for it, I just get itchy if I’m too positive.) The business plan is very concise and well-stated, the rewards are exactly what I would hope for–an ebook or the ebook three-book collection at a shopping cart price, the standard hardbound price level, and some nice swag at even the low levels–an attractive gryfon pin, and adorable plush which, sadly, seems to have been one of the first things to go (it’s still available, but at a price point that’s really for the die-hard fans now–unfortunate, but that’s rather the nature of these one-of-a-kind items.)

The stretch goals are pretty logical, too–mostly focusing on audio book adaptations, a very reasonable thing to aim for, particularly if her project’s response grows to the same degree that book 2 did, compared to book 1. The higher stretch goals don’t actually meaningfully add to book 3, they reach back into the series to add voice to books 1 and 2. Good idea, one of the dangers of the cult of the stretch goal is increasing the cost of your primary product.

But I must raise a small voice of protest, and this is just me, really. Backstory, I have kickstarter diabetes. The doctor first brought it to my attention when tests showed that I was pre-kickstarter-diabetic after I reviewed the kid’s programming primer, Foxy For(). It got MUCH worse when I covered the peffacrumlush and zataculous world of–hang on, I need to take my shot–Matlock the Hare. The writing style on this kickstarter story is chirpy and friendly and conversational and almost sent me for my insulin, but…not quite. Jess’s style isn’t exactly business school, but it’s to the point and expressive, and fits the “young adult/fun-loving adult” tone of the campaign. Still, I’d worry that the chatty tone of the Kickstarter might be reflected in the book itself–I’ve read the demo chapter, so it’s not really a big concern, and clearly the campaign is on a positive upward trend! But if I’m a fan of high fantasy, the chirpy tone of the kickstarter might strike a weird note for me on a cold read.

Not, like I said, a huge criticism, mostly a stylistic opinion from a grumpy old dog. It’s a little late to get in on the ground floor of Shard and his world, but check the kickstarter for Shard of the Sun and catch a wing to where his journey next goes!

The illustrations used in this post are intended to promote the creators’ work. Please do not reuse.

This week’s illustration is from “Samudai” fighting cats video game, now on Kickstarter.

One of the recent serious furry video game success stories, Armello, posted this to their followers on the twitters: a Kickstarter blog post called “A Year of Games from Down Under.” The gist of the article is, “It’s been one year since Kickstarter went live in Australia/NZ, here’s some games we love from the southern hemisphere.”

It’s a good little article, not a lot of deep coverage but fun to see the range of successful projects–and it leads with Armello, and not because Armello starts with “A” (though it does, I have a degree in this sort of thing. Also, the London Underground is not a political movement.)  There’s a few other fur-friendly treasures there–Paradigm and its mutant sloth, angry bears, wererats–it’s a mixed bag. But it’s nice to know we’re solidly planted deep in the fantasy gaming genre.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, no-where in particular, but it’s good to know we’re not the furry ghetto we might have been in the distant past.

Reviews this week: Laughing with Mormons in “The Furry Experience”

PS: Did you know that sometimes when you skip a week, 4,000 projects get posted? Still true.

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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

Life Size Pokemon (Ends: 12/5/2014)
I love Kickstarters for free stuff! This one is for a give-away of free life-sized pokemon art. Cute stuff.

Books/Print

A Shard of Sun (Ends: 12/16/2014)
Hardcover run for Book 3 of the Summer King Chronicles, Jess Owen’s epic gryphon clan trilogy

Clothing/Jewelry

Steadfast Kid’s Clothing (Ends: 12/5/2014)
Well, kid’s clothing and adult sizes too–tattoo art style animals, with some seriously cute tigers and owls.
I do like this clothing line, but doesn’t look like there’s much of a chance of it making goal.

Comics/Graphic Novels

Smilin’ Ed Comics (Ends: 12/11/2014)
It’s a bit ‘tank girl’ really–the friendliest smiling rat that ever escaped from 70s drug culture into your heart. Maybe.

Gold Digger: Gold Brick 5 (Ends: 12/12/2014)
Collected issues 101-125 of the Gold Digger comic series, from Antarctic Press, one of the granddaddies of anthro comics
I have a lot of love for Antarctic Press, most of their furry titles moved across the street to Radio Comics, but AP was one of the first groups to take a chance on the furry fandom.

The Furry Experience (Ongoing funding)
Patreon campaign for Ellen Natalie and her webcomic, a slice-of-life set in, of all places, Salt Lake City.

Film/Animation/Theater

RealAnimals Supreme Court Arguments (Ends: 12/7/2014)
Somewhere between ‘The Muppet Show’ and ‘The Washington Post.’ Canine re-enactments of supreme court hearings by dogs, #realanimalsfakepaws.
Yeah, so this isn’t the project poster’s creation, it’s an ongoing meme, being crowdsourced (?) by John Oliver.

Dogs At War: A Documentary (Ends: 1/8/2015)
A documentary about military service dogs, told through the dogs’ eyes

Tabletop Games

DragonFlame (Ends: 12/4/2014)
A quick card game for 2-5 players, of burning villages, hoarding goald, and eating knights!
Past its $10K goal!

Cleadonia (Ends: 12/10/2014)
Furry tabletop fantasy RPG.
So many furry tabletop RPGs out right now! The illos for this one are more quirky than artsy, I don’t see that carrying into a product with a market, myself.

The Underground: Sam and Fuzzy RPG (Ends: 12/12/2014)
Sam and Fuzzy: Paranormal Detectives. An RPG based on the wacky webcomic.

Technology

Chemion: Smart Glasses (Ends: 12/31/2014)
Fun ‘smart glasses’ with programmable LED displays displaying custom text, animations, readouts. Fun stuff.

Toys

Ichabod Plushie Prototype (Ends: 12/8/2014)
For all your big-eyed, optimistic corgie full of love needs

Video Games

Age of Aleria (Ends: 12/5/2014)
Pet breeding and raising game with a vast equine assortment to chose from, and dragons to hunt.

Legendary Battlegrounds (Ends: 12/5/2014)
A cute ‘once upon a time’ video game with an amusingly cumbersome Big Bad Wolf. No chance of it making goal, but fun.

Dragon Dating Simulator (Ends: 12/17/2014)
Sooo. I don’t know if this “Dragon Dating Sim” is a joke or not. I really can’t tell. This is what too much Indiegogo does to your brain. Someone else be the judge.

Samudai (Ends: 12/23/2014)
A fighting cat samurai game loosely inspired by Smash Bros, with a range of different challenges and four players

WWW

Inkster (Ends: 12/13/2014)
Development funding for the online art portfolio site Inkster
This is a lot of what Flickr used to be for me, an online art gallery/portfolio. Nice look and feel.

…Also by furries

Gotcha Gachapon (Ends: 12/5/2014): Meanwhile, in Colombus, Ohio, two furries launch a Japanese arcade and gift store, with tons of vending machines and gimcracks

…Meh

Eddie Earthdude (Ends: 12/6/2014): Oh. Oh dear. The artwork on this is astonishingly bad. Apocalyptically bad. It’s ‘Captain Planet’ meets the absolute worst furry artwork you can imagine.
Anubis PC Gaming System (Ends: 12/13/2014): Guys…guys guys guys…a PC case that looks like Anubis is really just kind of silly. Sorry to break it to you.
Furry4Life 2014 (Ongoing funding): It’s not that I don’t like Furry4Life, it’s a decent social network, it’s just that this crowdfunding page doesn’t tell anything tangible about the product, doesn’t really call anyone to act, or make any actionable promises. Don’t be this page.

…Just for fun

ChipCodes (Ends: 12/25/2014): Cartridge modifications to turn your Gameboy into an 8bit synthesizer with a fun guitar or xylophone case

 What’s Corbeau Backing This Week?
I have NOT been picking winners lately, with two of my three most recent projects cancelled or pulled. So I’m playing it safe, with this incredibly fidgitable-looking top. This will be endless hours of tactile enjoyment, I’m sure.

Thank you for the picture, Ellen!

Biweekly webstrip of the travails of a group of college kids in Salt Lake City…

The Furry Experience

Currently funding on Patreon

There aren’t a lot of furry slice-of-life comics with staying power. “Fur-piled” had a pretty impressive seven-year run, but beyond that, it seems like slice of life–a genre that thrives on character growth–doesn’t tend to stick around long enough to live to that promise. So looking at the five- or six-year history of Ellen Natalie‘s ongoing webcomic, “The Furry Experience,” is kind of amazing. Long-lived characters, an interesting world, and not a lot of shark-jumping.

It helps to have a great world to draw on. I’ve reviewed webcomics set in wacky sci-fi space ships and steampunk versions of Portland, and webcomics where gods play dice (funny 12-sided dice, too) with their characters’ lives, where characters are transformed between species, and where magical dragon ladies teleport out of refrigerators. Honestly, those kinds of fantasies have a lot less high weirdness to offer than Salt Lake City, and the kind of real-world drama (and humor) you can get by framing your narrative in a world that’s interpenetrated by the very conservative Church of Latter Day Saints.

Religion can be a touchy subject for furries, and for geek culture in general, because a lot of us feel burned by the church on some level (well over half of furries are queer, and I bet pretty close to 100% of us are dreamers and escapists, so that’s not really a surprise). And some of the story lines of TFE touch on the judgement and tension that a religious community can create (the subtle judgement of the background characters in Diana’s fashion plotline, for example; characters trying to juggle the idea of service to their church, at its strongest in the idea of a mission, with having a secular life and doubts about their faith). Of course, sometimes the Mormon backdrop is just played for laughs (take this sex ed video, for instance…) And the three main characters–Catherine, the artist–

Okay, so, is there an unwritten rule that the lens character for a furry webcomic must be an artist of the same species as the webcomic artist herself? Just saying. Like I can talk.

–Ahem. Catherine, the artist, is a member of the Mormon church, and her housemates Rhonda and Dawn have varying levels of “church outsider” happening. From my limited knowledge of Salt Lake City, and frankly, having gone to college and grown up in the south anyway, finding your place in, out of, or relative to a church is a part of growing up, particularly during those weird early 20something identity periods. Regardless, it makes a fresh setting compared to the “oh, whatever, anything goes” backdrops of a lot of strips.

The title “The Furry Experience” is kind of an interesting one–I had a little bit of conversation with Ellen about her time in the fandom, and it kind of started with TFE–“Better Days” and “Circles” introduced her to the fandom and got her out of an artistic slump, and there may be a bit of autobiography waaaay back on Page 1 (“Why don’t you google for Furries and see what you get?”) A lot of the early material is more about the idea of “furry,” of anthros in general, and it takes a while for the title to get into what turns into its meat and potatoes down the road–college, growing up, the awkward balance between faith and the world. Consider starting somewhere in the middle–around page 170 or so–the artwork is more mature, the plots are stronger. TFE never stops being a humorous web series, but it balances humor with story. I do wonder if, six years after the fact, Ellen might have chosen a different title, though.

Meanwhile, on Patreon, there’s a bunch of different ways to get involved. One of the more interesting ones, if you’re willing to make a substantial donation of $25 a month, is becoming an ongoing character in the comic–walk-on roles in crowd scenes and backgrounds on a regular basis. Searching for your furry alt is like trying to find Waldo, but more gratifying.

Anyway, check out the webcomic. If you like churchy stuff as much as I do, here’s a good place to begin, with a satisfying argument about gender roles and societal pressure within organized religion. If you like silly stuff, the most recent plotline has two high-quality dumb guys trying to dispose of an old sofa. If you like what you see, follow Ellen on FA and consider a monthly tip through Patreon.  Enjoy the ride!

Images used in this post are used with the permission of the artist for promotional purposes.

 

 

 

This week’s illustration is from Tara Fly’s 2015 Literary Cats calendar, now on Kickstarter. 

Okay, okay, okay. What would happen if Indiegogo decided to take on the sort of ongoing crowdfunding that Patreon does? But–wait for it–only for successful projects? It’s happened.

There was a time when I really liked Kickstarter and really hated Indiegogo. Kickstarter seemed professional–they weeded out the dumb joke projects like “Fund me finding my ass with both hands” (I don’t know that this was a project, but it’s not an exaggeration). They organized things in chronological order, not using some weird algorithmic sort.

Indiegogo, though, has surprised me–they’ve got some tricks. I’m going to have to write an extended paean of their features, but this new one could be a game-changer: projects that are successful may be able to sign onto Indiegogo’s ongoing funding platform.

The exciting thing about this for me is that it’s ongoing funding for projects that are proven success stories, which makes a heck of a lot of sense. Of course, this will encourage people with no business sense to create $5 campaigns. Maybe there’s a workaround.

How’d I find this? A recent project I covered last August–Mordrude’s Monsters, a handbook of realistic costume design–was invited to be a member of their pilot program.

I’m definitely going to do a long-form essay about this program–some thoughts about what it might mean, how it works, etc etc. Mordrude says she’ll give me some commentary on how the new program is working for her. For now, though, I look forward to seeing how this develops!

Reviews this week: Tradeable medallions with “Paw Coins” and crazy battling bears and bunnies with Anthro Borgs.

PS: Did you know that sometimes when you skip a week, 4,000 projects get posted? Seriously, there’s a lot of new stuff over the last two, sorry I procrastinated!

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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

Sun and Moon Dragons (Ends: 11/6/2014)
Realistic and detailed art prints, very Dungeons & Dragons feel.

Literary Cat Art Calendar 2015: Cats in Period Clothing (Ends: 11/21/2014)
Illustrated cate calendar with cats in luxurious period costumes

DOGs Postcards (Ends: 11/23/2014)
Cute cartoony postcards and canine rights activism.

Audio

PKMNetcast: It’s Super Effective! (Ends: 11/19/2014)
Podcast fundraiser for the It’s Super Effective! Pokemon Podcast, nicely organized and presented, more than halfway to goal!

Children’s Products

Maggie and the Feather of Flight (Ends: 12/21/2014)
An illustrated, magical mouse child’s book, in the Serendipity late 70s art style

Popsicle Bailee and the Mysterious Stranger (Ends: 12/28/2014)
A children’s book about the mysterious world your dog imagines and why she barks incessantly.

Clothing/Jewelry

Silver Ghosts: Day of the Dead pendants (Ends: 11/12/2014)
Silver animal totem pendants with a skeleton on the reverse

Little Heroes charms (Ends: 11/23/2014)
Cute little cuddly fantasy adventure animal charms.

Paw Coins Collectable Coins (Ends: 11/24/2014)
Embossed and enamelled coin/medallions with a range of furry artwork
These are supposed to be collectible, but I’m not seeing it. Hoping the project gets retooled as just a jewelry line, it’d probably be more successful.

3D My Kicks (Ends: 11/25/2014)
A collection of 3D printed, mostly animal-theme flipflops

I hope Senpai Notices Me tee shirt designs (Ends: 12/1/2014)
Minimal-effort but that’s kind of the point. Your senpai will almost certainly notice you in this tee!
A bit meme-y, but good for a chuckle

Comics/Graphic Novels

Ravenous (Ends: 12/5/2014)
Graphic novel of hairy man vs. equally hairy werewolf. Kind of Wolverine, not at all Twilight.

La storia dell’Orso (Ends: 12/6/2014)
An Italian project and therefore a little over my head, but seems to be an artsy and surreal story of a rabbit and a bear, very sketchy and noir

Events

Hearth’s Warming Eve (Ends: 11/12/2014)
If you happen to be in the San Diego area, you might be interested in this evening of Pony/Holiday themed music and festivities.

Film/Animation/Theater

Adventures of Christopher Bosh in the Multiverse Episode 2 (Ends: 11/22/2014)
Maybe if you’d seen the original Adventures of Christopher Bosh in the Multiverse, this will make sense. Probably not. Insane brain-collage with mystic wolf man and dolphin guys. This just makes no damned sense. Enjoy.

Horse Boy! The making of. (Ends: 11/30/2014)
11111, if you’re unfamiliar, is a challenging play/film about a young man obsessed with horses to a dangerous, even religious, degree, dark, disturbing, with sexual overtones. Obviously, it was crying to be made into a comedy mockumentary musical.
Do watch the video for this. It’s absurd.

Tabletop Games

Bricks of the Mouse Guard (Ends: 11/24/2014)
Are lego-style mouse miniatures a thing? Apparently! This one’s already past goal–fantasy lego mouse figures for your very specific gaming needs

Anthro Borgs: Slaves of Steel (Ends: 11/27/2014)
Big smashy pointy anthro bears, skunks, bunnies, and goats in miniature combat mayhem!

Travel

Dragon Hunters (Ends: 12/17/2014)
Folklore-based tourism with with print materials and GPS technology to help hunters find the dragon lore of Britain.

Video Games

Chimera Genesis (Ends: 11/20/2014)
Side-scrolling procedural platformer where you mix-and-match species to sprint past challenges
Here’s the demo, but it’s kind of murky and unappealing–I hope the game evolves a bit

Evocality (Ends: 11/20/2014)
Browser-based breeding and training game with a huge variety of colorful canine and canine-like animal companions.

Target Acquired (Ends: 11/27/2014)
Cat police girls in skin-tight armor romp through a mad scientist mouse’s evil labyrinth of doom. Side-scrolling fun, somewhat Mega Man inspired.

…Just for fun

The Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon (Ends: 11/21/2014): The definitive book about Sailor Moon’s journey to America, by a consultant for DIC Entertainment.
Animals in Delicious Food (Ends: 11/29/2014): This is the stupidest project ever, but… fox in a plate of curry.
GOTY: Gaming Awards, Radio, Database (Ends: 12/15/2014): A multimedia project aimed at being the Oscar awards for video games. Very slow start and far from goal, but an interesting idea.

 What’s Corbeau Backing This Week?
Oh, man! I’m so peeved that The Equestria Tarot got tossed by Kickstarter and Hasbro. Stupid intellectual property disputes…Hasbro really needs to clearly state the lines before which it will not come down like a ton of bricks on derivative content creators. I did throw a dollar at Anthro Borgs, but that was more of a “thumbs up” than full-on support…

Spinning blades and bionic bears in a danger room dungeon crawl…

Anthro Borgs

[EDIT: Funding and project cancelled :( ]

One of the best things about Nazis–and, yes, it is kind of a short list–is that, year in and year out, they’re a great go-to villain. Like hula hoops and oligarchy, they just keep coming back into style. Even in 3038.

Meet Dr. Bunkenstein. Not misunderstood, just mad. After reading too much Mein Kamf in heil school, he’s gotten the backing of a powerful, shadowy company to support his misguided research–in particular, the development of Soulforce, a unique substance able to create a bridge between the machine and living flesh.

Right away, you can see this isn’t going to go anywhere good.

Armed with the ability to create a race of hybrid human/animal/Waring 10-speed blenders, Bunkenstein and his corporate backers at X9 are able to launch their Master Plan (furries, 62% of you will be happy to know it involves mechanized, pantsless tiger guys, and I for one welcome our amoral post-apocalytic Nazi overlords). But four of his original creations–a rabbit built for amazing speed, a tank of a russian bear, a heavily-armed goat, and a skunk with a pair of fearsome biological weapons that are guns not whatever you might have been thinking–pull away from their creator and make a break for freedom.

Here’s where it gets fun: Anthro Borgs, now on Kickstarter, is the action-adventure story of their escape. In this 1-4 player tactical combat game, the characters must battle an environment filled with spinning blades, spikes, pits, and what look like mimics–and each other–to escape Bunkenstein’s clutches.

Game play: Characters have a fairly simple character sheet with a couple of special abilities, damage output, ranged vs. melee combat, damage resistance, and a “ferocity” track (the more damage a character takes, the nastier s/he is in combat…) There’s a little bit of the mechanics in JunkRobot’s video collection.  I’m a little unsure of whether the game is more “player vs player” or “player vs environment,” it’s a tactical game so probably more the former. The spikes, gears, and other traps look like a lot of fun to play with!

Of course the project is mostly going to be about the characters themselves. I’m a sucker for “big and brutal,” and the goat and bear have that in spades. The female characters–well, the skunk is pretty nice looking in some of the shots they have of her, but the rabbit has a distinctly “Tiny Toons” look–it’s that age-old problem that anthro females are prettier than the males. The rabbit, Jasmine Speed, has a bit of a “Barbie goes to war” thing happening. They all have a fun mix of fur, figure, and machinery, good augmented action hero characters, it looks like they’d be a lot of fun to stomp around the board with.

So far as the kickstarter itself goes, it’s a touch complex, which seems to be the rule for minis projects. The game has a lot of add-ons and stretch goals (which are also add-ons, it doesn’t look like the core game is meant to expand, but the project planners haven’t announced any stretch goals yet, I could be wrong.) I’d be a little worried that the core package – $80 “North America” pledge level – is going to feel like an incomplete game without the extra $220 of goodies in the “Australia” set.

I would also suggest that calling a pledge level “North America” or “Australia” is a bit confusing in an international funding platform. Neither here nor there.

There’s a certain feeling I get looking over the available material on the project that’s hard to shake, and it seems to run through tabletop action gaming in general, that the product is only ever going to see a male audience. Which may be true, the female wargamer is a v-e-r-y rare life form, but that’s not a strength or a marketing platform. The most perfect examples of this are the swimsuit issues put out by Palladium of “RIFTS” “fame.” Now, I don’t expect any action-adventure board game to do well on the Bechdel Test, but when you put the towering, angry, bad-ass Isbjorn the bear and Roderick the goat over Jasmine Speed, who seems to be fresh from either the salon or the lobotomist, it does feel like the label should say “for boys ages 14 and up.” I’m not sure this product is really girlfriendable.

Anyway, that’s not a huge “ding” against the product, it’s an action game, not social commentary. This is a product that’s really aimed directly at the furry demographic, and I hope to see it demo at my local game shop. Good luck, guys!

Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.

Collectable medallions with a broad range of art…

Paw Coins Collectible Coins

Kickstarter ending 11/24/14

The word for the day is “Exonumia.”

One of the things I hope to see in endlessly refreshing Kickstarter is the next big con craze. And I know I won’t see it coming, or I’ll totally get it wrong. I thought that MaryMouse’s “Certified” badges were, well, kind of silly. And I’m pretty sure that if they were brought in front of the judge he’d say “Jury, do you find the defendant silly?” And there’d be a big “Yes we do your honor” and lots of flash-bulb photography, and MaryMouse would be forced to, I don’t know, hand out cupcakes in SoHo or something. But they’re a part of furry fandom culture now, and that’s really neat. And I’m pretty sure this is what MaryMouse does on weekends. Foxloft’s Tagua Totems were another, they’re pretty but seemed so specific and niche when they first came out–but you can wear them out and about and they’re nice art, I see three or four of them at even the little furry gatherings.

Both of these are ubiquitous in the fandom, or at least the slice I interact with. And both are really nice little shorthand signs for who we are when we’re not shambling, blunt-muzzled hairless chimpanzees, even if you might never get them exactly right (try finding a piece of costume jewelry to show that you’re, say, a foxtopus, meerkrab, or Mexican hairless). Something that expresses someone’s furry side, but isn’t too hard to mass produce, is going to be a winner.

Am I right with Mel Drake’s “Paw Coins” project? Hard to say without a crystal ball. But there’s a lot of the hallmarks here–individual enough to paint the fandom with a broad brush, a small enough collection to be manageable.

The general scope of the project: A series of a dozen medallions, textured enameled coins with a hole in the top, about the size of a US quarter (or a dog license). As the project base expands, new coins will come on line–Japanese themed coins, Egyptian designs, coins specific to interests, and so on, to create a modest range of designs that should appeal to a range of wearers.

One aspect of artist MelSkunk’s business plan that I particularly like is the idea of partnership designs–in addition to designs of her own, MelSkunk wants to use her coins to partner with other artists as an inexpensive promotional piece for their projects, a way to spread the word and share their work–maybe like the limited run of Kevin and Kell coins she talks about as a part of the Kickstarter.

A part of the plan I’m ambivalent about is the idea of the series being collectible. It seems like a double-edged sword. If you can somehow tap into the right-place-right-time magic of, say, beanie babies, you might really have a thing! the coins have rarity values assigned to them–so the kickstarter angel and trailblazer coins are both super-rare, print runs of 50. The 8 common designs of series one are in quantities of 500, limited but probably about the demand of the fandom…maybe. This is a bit of a gamble, to my mind. I’d be curious to know what the print run is on MaryMouse’s “CERTIFIED: RAVER” badge, for instance.

This gets me to one of my two big conflicts with the project–is it about furry identify play (“FIP”) or collectability? If it’s about FIP, the idea of a limited print run and the general focus on sets instead of single items are a handicap. The 100 rare kitsune pieces could get snapped up in two or three cons, and then, well, that one’s gone, and that’s part of the project’s plan, there won’t be another, but there’s probably more than 100 Kitsunes and Japanophiles that might want one–probably more than would want the dumpy blue fursuiter coin (not my favorite, it looks too much like a Bad Furry commemorative medallion).

The second guff I have with this is tied to the first–Melskunk’s concept of the project for the Kickstarter is sets, and they’re a little pricey! Looking at the first set of eight commons, I personally, being who I am–a cynical liberal gay dog–might want the sexy werewolf, I’ve got a dragon friend that might want the hoarding medallion, and after a couple of drinks I might wear the gay pride paw or use it for my key chain fob. The “Dog Person” I could take or leave, it’s the wrong sort of cute for me. I could give away the “cat person” and maaaybe the tiger, and I have no idea what I’d do with the American flag coin (it’s kind of pretty but I don’t like jingoism or rampant patriotism on principle) or the fursuiting coin. So that kind of leaves me with half the set that’s keepers. But because of the structure of the Kickstarter’s rewards, I can’t get those without buying the full set–so in the specific case of the Kickstarter I’ve blown $65 (the minimum for a set of commons) for three pieces I really like.

It just feels like a conflict of concepts. If the project is about the FIP, I’d like the sexy werewolf and gay pawprint, please, here’s my $12. If it’s about collectability, then sure, the entire set makes sense, but I don’t know if collectability is really a “thing,” you have to get really lucky and capture the right place and right time. Maybe at a convention merchant’s table you could do something like sets of two or three, one visible and the others hidden, or just sell them Foxloft Studios style as what they are, expressions of one’s inner dragon or otter or bear.

That being said, there’s a certain magic of specificity in a series of linked ideas–coins, fighting varmint badges, magnets, whatever–and customers might well want to collect a set–but they’re going to want to collect their set. Whether the Kickstarter meets its goal may well be tied to that conflict.

Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.

 

 

This week’s illustration is from Hiorou’s  webcomic, Eorah, now on Indiegogo. 

Good grief, it’s been an interesting week for furry-inspired tabletop RPGs, with two compelling projects–the first, Ultimum, is more interesting for what it threatens to do to the RPG industry (I really don’t know enough about the game’s story to get a read on it), and the fascinatingly weird and surreal post-apocalypse game, Genestorm. And I can absolutely rabbit on about TRPGs for hours, so…I won’t. Maybe later.

Instead I want to talk about two semi-relevant projects that are kind of neat. The first because of its crazy high pledge level, the second because, well, it’s an anthology comic that’s welcomed some furries into its fold, and that’s pretty neat.

Let’s start with those ears.

This is a fur-friendly accessory–headphones with outward-facing speakers (neat, probably a little tinny, but neat), LEDs in a range of colors, and kitty-cat stylings. And they have made…can you believe it? over $1 million in pledges. I can’t believe it. I’m frankly agog. There’s been other neko-themed headphones, but this one’s really taken off. The ravey lights are probably a factor, and the unusual outward-facing speakers, too–it’s kind of a neat “everything” project, well worth a look. I’m pretty sure I’ll be seeing the Axent Wear Cat Ear headphones at Texas Furry Fiesta, I’ll be looking for them.

This is a neat “furry gone mainstream” project, and I’m excited to see it. Okay, kitty ears aren’t really furry, are they? More anime? Maybe, that’s probably where they started, but the energy of the kitty cat ear may be one of the things that’s pulled our little fandom into the mainstream. Cat ears broke the ice. Next, kangaroo tails. Mark my word.

Next, Armorous–and I have misspelled that so many times! Armorous is not specifically a furry story or product,, although “furries” and “erotic fantasy comics” go hand-in-paw (sure, hand) for a long way back. But it is very furry-welcoming, with three furry artists on board–in particular Grisser,  Brandon Zuckerman, and Redic Nomad, with at least 10 artists besides, and a host of monsters and not so monstrous monsters by the non-furs, too. Medieval fantasy is generous to anthro fans.

The project is an erotic fantasy anthology comic, maaaybe smut, maaabye just playful romp. Hard to say, could easily be both. The promise of the comic is to be a light treatment of a wide variety of sexuality in a medieval fantasy mode–not any one orientation. Though there does seem to be a lot to love for people who like big, brutal, and musclebound, so there’s that. It looks a bit like the weight of the book is evenly distributed between bricks and feathers.

Anyway, playful, friendly, and furry-inclusive without being furry-specific. I look forward to seeing this project in print.

Reviews this week: I’m apparently a sucker for historical comics. This week is the 1929 historical/humor webcomic, Rudek and the Bear.

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

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bear (Ends: 11/12/2014)
Another adorable children’s book about adorable bears. It’s pretty cute.

Comics/Graphic Novels

Rudek and the Bear V1 (Ends: 11/13/2014)
Web-to-print of Rudek and the Bear, an historical/humor anthro web comic set in 1929 Poland

Eorah the Webcomic (Ends: 12/5/2014)
Fundraiser for the Eorah fantasy webcomic by Hiorou

The Golden Week (Patreon ongoing funding)
Furry slice of life webcomic, available in *so* many languages
So really, I’m just in love with his lion character.

Costumes/Crafts

Axent Wear Cat Earphones (Ends: 11/7/2014)
Cute kitty headphones with little external speakers and glow effects, in a rangeo f colors.
Can I just say, $1,159,000? Really? Wow. This is not the first cat-ear headphone project I’ve seen, but it’s the most wildly successful.

Events

F3 Convention (Ends: 11/4/2014)
Crowdfunding for the F3 furry convention in Missouri

Film/Animation/Theater

The Last Remaining Ocelots (Ends: 11/15/2014)
Documentary about the two remaining populations of ocelots in Texas

Tabletop Games

Werewolf: Dystopia (Ends: 11/14/2014)
A gritty, grungey urban variant of the Werewolf: Public Domain Card Game
So tired of werewolf. So tired of werewolf.

Genestorm (Ends: 11/15/2014)
A surreal post-apocalypse tabletop RPG with GORGEOUS B&W art by Dirtiran
Ohmigosh, the artwork here is strange and evocative. Wow. By the designer of the ‘Albedo’ RPG.

Ultimum (Ends: 12/13/2014)
Tabletop scifi/fantasy RPG with rich and seamless RPG support, humanity returns to earth after long millenia of absense.
Most of the kickstarter project page focuses on the tech side, I’m a little unsure of the setting. There’s a bit more on their website, though.

Toys

Fruitimals Plush Toys (Ends: 11/20/2014)
Cuddly fox-oranges, pigmelons, squidples, and aubergenuins

Video Games

The Land of Eyas (Ends: 10/29/2014)
A charming puzzle/platform video game, a little Binding of Isaac and a little Where The Wild Things Are.

Savages – The Inner Beast (Ends: 11/15/2014)
Sort of Sasquatch: The RPG, a video game about finding your inner monster.

Adult

Armorous (Ends: 11/7/2014): A fantasy erotic comic anthology featuring, among others, the work of Grisser and Redic-Nomad

…Just for fun

Bacon’s Bow Ties (Ends: 11/16/2014): This is cute little bow ties for kittens. Right there is your elevator speech.
Giger’s Universe (Ends: 12/6/2014): A virtual museum of Giger’s media and art. You know, the Alien’s ‘Xenomorph’ guy, one of the world’s creepiest artists.

 What’s Corbeau Backing This Week?
This month is oh-so-expensive! But I shook my couch cushions a little and got enough pennies to get a copy of Armorous when it comes out.

Historical humor set on the Russia/Poland border, 1929…

Rudek and the Bear

Kickstarter ending 11/13/2014

I just finished looking over author/illustrator Peter Donahue’s pitch video for “Rudek and the Bear” and it got me thinking of how rich historical allegory as a genre is for fans of anthropomorphics. One of my more recent finds is the amazing allegorical tour de force, “The Beast is Dead.” I wish I could find a better link to share, but this period graphic novel represents many of the countries involved in World War II with totemic species–Russian bears, Italian hyenas, German wolves, US buffalo. It’s…it’s quite a thing.  Donahue (pdonz on FA) has created a world that’s in some ways richer, dipping only lightly into the way-too-deep allegorical well (clever fox, Russian bear), and telling stories with real character and humor. Telling the sweeping epic of WW2 is a lot easier than opening up a more real, less mythological time and place, humanizing (so to speak) a place and time in the past that’s barely a paragraph in a high school world history textbook.

Donahue’s webcomic, Rudek and the Bear, is a sort of gentle military farce, set in a military border post between Russia and Poland, 1929. Much of its humor is in bureaucratic incompetence and tedium in a pointless border conflict–well, not so much a conflict as an inconvenience. Rudek the fox is a border guard protecting Poland from smugglers and refugees–it may not be glorious, or important, or necessary, or even reasonable, but it’s his job. You can see the weary lines on his face as he deals with military nonsense and bureaucratic garbage, reluctantly dealing with one day after the next.

As a character, Malek is great. Jaded, tired, and totally believable. Somehow the humor echoes “Calvin and Hobbes” more than, say, M*A*S*H, the characters approach their situations with more than a bit of philosophy and whimsy.

There’s a faint note of sorrow that’s hard to escape, knowing the context for the story. What most people know about this historical period is that it ends, abruptly, a casualty of World War II. Donahue talks a lot about his love of that period in his video–the Second Polish Republic had a strong economy and a booming art, film, and music industry. But it is bounded, and it will end. There’s moments that tie into the historical events of the time (1929 is the year the Great Depression imploded, and that hits at least one of the characters even across the ocean).

One of the faintly confusing elements in this project is that Donahue is juggling two narratives–the webcomic and its web-to-print version on Kickstarter, and the later story, Zuzel and the Fox, set in Poland in 1939–about as “Eve of War” as you can get. The two narratives are connected, and Donahue sometimes jumps back and forth on which one he’s discussing.

The web version’s pretty cool, with lots of details on artistic process, technique, and a little historical context, but the Kickstarter’s got a lot going for it, too. The artwork for the limited edition graphic novel is higher-quality, and the usual unique commission materials are available at a surprisingly low level, as a part of the $35 tier and upward (you can be a part of the all-anthro group portrait at $35, a sweet digital portrait at $100, and some fun swag besides all that.

Obviously, check out the remarkable Rudek and the Bear webcomic to get a sense for how Donahue’s artwork has grown over the years, the characters, and the delicate humor of the series. And, perhaps, some hints about what 1939 will bring.

Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.

 

 

This week’s illustration is from the art book and card set, Fire Dragons and Other Rare Ember Creatures, 

I’m at a loss on semi-furry celebrity artist Dave Smith’s kickstarter, “Cerebus Archive Number 2.” I am totally unclear on the concept, I do not even have a roadmap to the concept. I know what we are selling here–a 16-page portfolio. I do not know what we are raising money for.  Or how much is needed. $800 is needed, I think, or $40,000. The first kickstarter ran some time in May, and was successful–I guess? taking in $33,000 over its goal of $800., although actually the goal was $20,000, so we’re golden. Or not. I don’t know.

Apparently backers get a number, and that number is transferable. Which is good, I’ve backed a great many kickstarters and I haven’t gotten a number yet. So that’s a thing.

How much does he need? How much will he receive? What is the roadmap to success? Did we win? I think we won.

In six months the grim little aardvark has taken over $51,000 in Kickstarter pledges, which is kind of amazing on its own, but I have no…idea…what he actually wants. WHAT DO YOU WANT, AARDVARK?

Ahem. I’m a little sleep deprived and high on Dayquil. That’s my excuse.

Reviews this week: The beautiful illustrated Victorian/Indian mystery, The Unlucky Fox.

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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

BABEL (Ends: 10/16/2014)
Luminous, animal/fantasy art illustration and book with gently surreal imagery.

Note Cards for a Happy Mailbox (Ends: 10/25/2014)
80s and 90s esque kitty cat lineart illustrations and postcards. Cute stuff, hard to describe!

Books/Print

The Unlucky Fox (Ends: 11/1/2014)
The illustrated Victorian Englishfox in India adventures of a young fox unravelling a family mystery and conspiracy.

The Green Ember (Ends: 11/3/2014)
Illustrated “Redwall” esque children’s book–sword-carrying rabbits on a daring quest. Very pretty visuals!
Past its $10000 goal!

Children’s Products

Secret Agent 00K9 (Ends: 10/28/2014)
Sort of a weiner dog James Bond. The number of bad dog puns here is crazy over the top.

Corgi Tales Books (Ends: 10/29/2014)
Cute little corgies in an illlustrated educational series. C is ALWAYS for ‘Corgi.’

Major Nature: Guardian of the Great Woods Forest (Ends: 11/9/2014)
An illustrated short story collection for kids, featuring a pretty awesome bear

Comics/Graphic Novels

Cerebus Archive #2 (Ends: 10/25/2014)
An ongoing fundraising effort to raise money for the restoration and preservation of the CEREBUS 6,000 page graphic novel story.
I really, really, really don’t understand what this kickstarter is selling. Sorry. I assume fans of Cerebus the Aardvark will be able to figure it out.

Samurai Chef Print Edition (Ends: 10/27/2014)
Fighting manga monkey cooking comic action GO!
The mayamada.com label is an interesting one. It’s a combined manga/clothing brand. Of course tees with webcomic characters are not a unique concept, but it’s unusual to see the two ideas evolving together. Also, the leopard chef is kind of hot.

A Year of Questorverse (Ends: 12/3/2014)
The raccoony adventures of Quentyn Quinn–in SPAAACE (or in Hyrule possibly)
Not in love with this one, but it seems on topic. Pledge level just a bit high and going with the maximum pledge time on Kickstarter.

Costumes/Crafts

Fursuit Kit (Patent Pending) (Ends: 10/28/2014)
Simple, brightly-colored fursuit partial DIY kit.
The biggest flaw I see in this one is the illustration that shows what’s in the fursuit kit kind of highlights the lack of a need for a fursuit kit at the list price.

Fruitsuit Creations (No close date)
Capital funding for Fruitsuit Creations, a newish fursuiting company on gofundme.

Tabletop Games

Fire Dragons and Other Rare Creatures Book and Playing Cards (Ends: 10/31/2014)
Glowing gemlike illustrations of fantasy creatures in artbook and playing cards

One Night Ultimate Werewolf Daybreak (Ends: 11/28/2014)
New roles for Werewolf, with cute illustrations!
I cannot easily express how ‘done’ I am with Werewolf. But I do like the illustrations on this one.

Toys

Rio full color vinyl figure (Ends: 11/1/2014)
Collaboration between Michael Vega and Studio Cute: a 9″ figurine of Rio the Lion

Video Games

Wulves (Ends: 10/28/2014)
Super-cutesy training/breeding pet game filled with wolves. Ahem, Wulves.

…Meh

The Real World of the Dragoonies (Ends: 11/27/2014): What is a Dragoonie? You don’t want to know, and you probably don’t want your child exposed to them. They’re a bit like dragons, and a bit like “Grey” aliens, but mostly they’re like a “Good Job!” sticker in fifth grade art class.

…Just for fun

Megaman X the Movie (Ends: 11/1/2014): Nobody else has pledged for this one, but the middle-aged guy in a MegaMan costume is probably worth the price of admission. Also, fun with copyright infringement.
Kult of God Cutlery (Ends: 11/29/2014): This is silly, but I’m loving it: over-the-top, decadent fantasy cutlery knives and forks for eating like you’re on an album cover.

A young fox returns to the continent of his birth to find conspiracy and danger…

The Unlucky Fox (Or, The Peculiar Story of a Dapper Young Fox Out to Solve a Family Mystery in India)

Kickstarter ending 10/31/14

For me, this book hits all the right notes. Not only is the illustration work sterling–rich backgrounds, realistic characters, great clothes and action scenes–it’s a story set in a really amazing historical period, when Victorian England was an empire and trying to spread its rule and aesthetic over a vast territory. The strange juxtaposition of the most British of British periods and the so-very-different culture of India created so much amazing imagery, photographs, and cultural fallout, you could set any number of stories there. For a deep dive into the period, its artifacts, and…foxes…check the author Scott Plumbe’s Pintarest-style bloglett and be awash in the somewhat schizophrenic mindset of Eurocentricism in India circa 1890.

Or maybe you’re just here for the foxes. That’s okay too.

The Unlucky Fox, now on Kickstarter, is the story of Theodore, a dapper young vulpine returning to his family’s home in Calcutta, India, following a cryptic note from his uncle, hinting of family intrigue and secrets. From there, Theo’s life is a wash of danger and conspiracy as he and his uncles acquaintances are caught in a shadowy duel between the powerhouses of Czarist Russia and Victorian England.

If there aren’t cups and cups of assam tea to accompany this historical whodunit, I shall be most put out.

Want to learn more about the book? Of course check the Kickstarter out. You can also look over a sample chapter–no illustrations, unfortunately–and the cast of characters on the Unlucky Fox website. There’s no shortage of materials there, packed into the website with a dedication to the Victorain “stuffed foyer” aesthetic admirable in its historical accuracy.

The author’s illustration blog shows the range of Plumbe’s work, from commercial illustration to photorealistic portraits to rich cartography and character studies. I’d go directly to the illustrations for Aesop’s wolf fable, myself. A lot of these entries open up into mini-portfolios of their own.

Some of the “gimmes” for this kickstarter, besides the digital book, are really nice. Fans of Victoriana and vulpines alike will love Rosemary Bartram‘s sterling and gold fox cameo broach, with the book’s “fox and tea” logo (Dear Whines: please note, this is the expected and proper level of support for your mate’s Kickstarter project. Just saying.) And for a high but not unreachably so price, you can go to Plumbe’s studio in Canada and study up on Corel Painter and Photoshop with the artist himself.

An interesting choice on the part of the creator: nowhere, as far as I know, is the Unlucky Fox physical book itself available as a reward. That’s an interesting choice. I could easily be wrong on this, but it seems like the Kickstarter’s physical reward is an art and inspiration book, not the illustrated novel. The main reward is digital, a serial installment of the book on a monthlyish basis (which itself is wonderfully Victorian, most of Dickens’s novels were released as newspaper serials.) I may be wrong on this, I could be reading the rewards too literally. A little bit of clarification on the rewards might be useful.

Unfortunately, the Kickstarter seems to be having a slow start, it’s been running for a few days yet and hasn’t reached 10% of goal, which is ensaddening. I’d love to see this one succeed, it’s an elegant product and a rich addition to fox lit.

Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.

PS: The Kickstarter video starts a bit slow, but at 1:10 or so it kicks into dynamic typography, stopmotion animation, and a neat scruffcore design with a Victorian edge. So feel free to skip ahead if you’ve read this far already…

This week’s illustration is from the children’s graphic novel, “Fetch: An Odyssey“

It’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon, not a lot of projects really “popping” so far as a high anthropomorphic content goes. The only one that really stands out to me, and it’s a bit off topic, is “Fetch,” which hits a lot of furry buttons without really feeling like a furry project. It’s a novel about a little girl who loses her dog, and braves the Greek Gods to find him. Kind of a twist on The Aeniad and the story of Orpheus rescuing his beloved from Hades, but with a dangerously plucky little girl.

There’s also an absolutely, unreasonably buff plush  fox. I’m finding myself a little distracted by him, but I’m easily distracted by skimpy little shorts. I was going to say he’s ripped, but it seems like that’s literally true at least once.

I’m a big fan of mythology, and generally pro-graphic-novels-for-kids, so I like this one immensely!

What’s new in Kickstarter, they’ve updated their Terms of Use. Ideally the changes will make Kickstarter less scammy, and went a good distance toward clarifying the obligations of a creator. It’s a lot of legal in there–I’m debating whether to post an article talking about it, but it would be quite a snooze. One of the highlights is that the new TOS should let Kickstarter be active in some new countries. So we’ll see how that unrolls!

No new reviews this week, and the projects are a bit less relevant overall, but there’s still some good stuff to look over!

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

New Projects Art

The 2015 Cut Paper Art Calendar (Ends: 10/3/2014)
These gently Asian-inspired animal art cut paper calendars never fail to amaze me. Old style Japanese woodcuts, and a little Miyazaki.

Books/Print

Sanara: Journey to Terracana (Ends: 10/11/2014)
An illustrated ‘Child trapped in magical land’ novel. But with corgies and anthro cats, so there’s lots to love.

Children’s Products

Travel Buddies Adventures (Ends: 10/8/2014)
Two friendly bears on an educational quest, illustrated by Animaniacs artist James Peebles
So, I really love the artwork on this, it’s charming and a little snarky. But there’s not a single dollar pledged? Mr Peebles must not be pushing at all for this. Come on, at least Mom should have chipped in.

The Restricted Adventures of Raja the Cat (Ends: 10/19/2014)
An educational graphic novel/ebook for kids focusing on empathy, teleporting cats, tall alien feline morphs.
Video rambles a lot, as if the funder was trying to sell the concept of empathy. Is that a product? Skip forward to 1:29 if you just want cats.

Comics/Graphic Novels

FW Chaos (Ends: 10/4/2014)
Two kitty girls save the world from demons and a lack of cuteness.
Artwork by Kitsune Windsor

Red after the Party (Ends: 10/11/2014)
A manga/supers twist on Red Riding Hood, with a BIG wolf.
Check the artist’s gallery for comic work

Fetch: An Odyssey (Ends: 10/11/2014)
A young girl goes to save her dog from the Greek underworld (with the help of a really, really buff plush fox) in this reworking of an ancient myth.
Graphic novel therepy for a little girl who lost her dog, but really awesome therapy. That’s an unreasonably muscular fox.

Carribean Blue Vol. 3 (Ends: 10/14/2014)
Kitty girls, American manga, and apparently kaiju? In the final volume of web-to-print Carribea Blue

Who Needs the Moon? (Ends: 11/2/2014)
Vampires vs. Werewolves is kind of overplayed right now, but these are gangly and awkward werewolves.

Costumes/Crafts

Suncatcher Craft Eyes (Ends: 10/20/2014)
A wide variety of glass eyes for crafters

Video Games

Feral: Cat Simulator (Ends: 10/31/2014)
An open-world survival game, wherein housecats are played

Adult

Ponyplay (Offbeater Voting Period)
A ponyplay calendar collection. Amazing costumes, where anthropomorphics intersect with leather and BDSM.

…Coming soon?

Paw Coins: Furry pendant coins (Not yet launched): A collection of dog tag style coins by (or organized by) Melskunk
Gene Storm (Not yet launched): A sci-fi role-playing game work in process by Patpahootie, with amazing B&W art.

…Just For Fun

Fragile Rock: Emo Puppet Band (Ends: 10/15/2014): From the mind behind 2000s faux German band ‘Neu Tickles’ comes Fragile Rock. Oh. It’s from Austin. I can’t say I’m totally surprised.

…Meh

Coach Leo Pilot (Ends: 10/16/2014): Kid’s educational program featuring the most awkward-looking mascot lion ever. He looks so worried, so unsure. Poor guy.

 

 What’s Corbeau Backing This Week?
Foxfunding a copy of “Fetch,” which isn’t much of a surprise. Lately I’ve been listening to a comic book podcast with a great sense of humor, where two comic industry professionals do their best to explain The X-Men continuity. “Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men” is a lot of fun, and I’m happy to chip in in some tiny way to their Patreon.