Utterly out-of-nowhere department. Thanks to friends we stumbled upon Nightbitch, an upcoming horror-comedy starring Amy Adams (Enchanted, Arrival), based on a 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder. Adams stars as a suburban mom not only struggling with raising her young son, but also wrestling with resentment over having to give up her previous life as an artist. Oh, and at night, she’s turning into a domestic dog. Yes. The film is directed by Marielle Heller, and it’s coming to theaters on December 6th. Check out the first trailer — but be warned, it does have some naughty words!

image c. 2024 Searchlight Pictures

From Magnetic Press comes My Friend Toby, a wordless graphic novel written and illustrated by Gregory Panaccione. “Toby lives in a small seaside village with his artist friend Marcel. Toby was once a stray, but Marcel took him in, and they’ve been best friends ever since. Only now, Marcel is going through a rough patch. Broken-hearted and unable to pay the bills, their future is uncertain. It is all beyond Toby’s comprehension, but he’s not worried. As long as there are scraps in his bowl and new neighborhood territories to claim, everything will be fine. What more could a carefree dog want out of life? Told largely from Toby’s canine perspective, readers will be treated to a peek between the ears of Man’s Best Friend, dealing with such critical topics as: a) strange cats, b) new neighbors, c) car rides, d) territory disputes, e) thunderstorms, f) being left alone, g) puppy memories, and oh, so much more.” It’s available now in hardcover.

image c. 2024 Magnetic Press

Taral Wayne (born Wayne MacDonald), a Canadian artist in both science fiction and furry fandoms, passed away last week at age 72. (October 12, 1951 - July 31, 2024.)

I had the opportunity to hang out with Taral many times from about 1994-2001 until I moved away, after which I sadly let myself become more distant. If you were a friend or colleague of Taral's, even if you're not in furry fandom, please feel free to post a comment or personal memory here!

Taral Wayne was a resident of Toronto and discovered science fiction fandom in the early 1970s. Within the next ten years he was an active participant, lending his artistic talents to zine culture. He was also a member of the proto-furry APA, Vootie.

Look, we’re just quoting the artist! Honestly! We met Helen Asia at her table at WonderCon, and admired her various feline designs on everything from t-shirts to enamel pins… to a complete Cosmic Cat Tarot Deck. You can visit her web site and see more of what she has to offer. Interestingly, we met her at a con in Southern California, but all her items are priced in British pounds…

image c. 2024 by Helen Asia

It’s always fun to come across a skilled artist with a unique and readily identifiable style. Sita Cardenas (or Retronerd as they call themselves) certainly fits that bill. We met them at WonderCon last month. Their specialty is fan art of gaming, anime, and comic book characters drawn in a distinctive style based on classical Aztec art. You’ve never seen the like! Look at their web site to see what we mean. They offer their art on pins, stickers, coffee mugs, and other cool items — not to mention they sell originals too.

image c. 2024 by Sita Cardenas

In the second part of this piece, we will consider the rise of AI-generated art from a more subjective point of view, focusing on its ethical and societal implications. In the first part found here, we went over why AI models do not store and reproduce exact copies of the artworks they have been trained on.

Thank you to 'Yote, who has a PhD in computational biology, for providing feedback and fact-checking for this article.

If you have any involvement with the furry fandom – and if you're reading this, you probably do – you will have seen a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) over the past few weeks/months, particularly about AI-generated art. What you'll also have seen is that most of this talk has been characterised by fear and anger. Several furry websites and organisations, such as Inkbunny, Fur Affinity and the Furry Writers' Guild, have all issued statements or updated their policies to ban AI-generated content or aspects thereof.

As a largely artistic community and given that AI-generated content threatens the status quo, this is completely understandable. The objections to AI art have been numerous; some rely on nebulous and abstract concepts such as AI art being emotionless, some consider it unfair to artists who have put effort into learning their skills and others have chosen to focus on the economic aspects of competing against AI. Anti-AI sentiment has grown in the art community and spilled off of the internet in the form of legal challenges against several companies involved in providing AI art services.

It would be out of scope of this text to address every single argument for or against AI. Instead, I would like to focus on two aspects of the debate; one which is objective and one which is subjective. The first, objective, aspect is what AI is and how it works. This is important because it's difficult to have a proper discussion about the technology when it is misunderstood – and I think that most discussion around AI fundamentally misunderstands how it works. The second, subjective, aspect involves copyright and the ethics of training AI. This is a question about the sort of world in which we wish to live and how we should treat one another. I feel that these two questions are the most important ones for deciding how AI will fit into our world. Hopefully, I can correct some misconceptions about how AI works and put forward a view of the world which others will find appealing as well.

Due to the length of this article, it has been split in two. The second part will address the social and ethical aspects of AI-generated art.

Thank you to 'Yote, who has a PhD in computational biology, for providing feedback and fact-checking for this article.

While 2021 was a pretty crappy year overall, for anthro gaming titles it was certainly a renaissance. It also did an excellent job curb stomping my 2018 statements that visual novels seem to be the genre of choice for anthro game developers. In 2021 we had a Metroid-vania mixed with a brawler in Ursa Nominated FIST. We had an isometric top-down combat adventure in Ursa Nominated Death’s Door. Now we have a game that is a narrative and art focused 2D grid exploration and creativity game in Chircoy: A Colorful Tale. Unfortunately this one didn’t get a nomination, because I would not have complained if it did.

This game is interestingly one I would recommend to furries who are artists more than gamers. While it doesn’t require being an artist by any means, and traditional gamers would be able to complete the story just fine, the narrative has more reflection on the power of being a creative type and the stress of societal expectations that comes with artistic pursuits. Imposter syndrome, having people demand things from you for exposure, and other such tropes in the artist world are addressed through your character’s trials.

There is a full world to explore and color to your heart’s content and it's more about the journey than the conflict. But there is no art without some struggle. While your character named after your favorite dish may have started their adventure wanting to wield the magic brush of this world, heavy is the hand who wields.

To avoid spoilers stop reading at Art within the Art

Not since the 1980s have anthropomorphic animals and the Olympics come together more than in the news out of Australia in the past few weeks. As the Summer Olympics get ready to begin after a year's delay due to the global pandemic, one artist has brought some furry thunder for the teams Down Under.

With just over a week until #Tokyo2020 gets underway, @RoyalAustMint and @Woolworths have teamed up to release limited edition Olympic and Paralympic $2 coins 💰 pic.twitter.com/l24GMChArC

One of the regrets I had on submitting this ranked list of every furry cosmetic "outfit" available in the popular video game Fortnite Battle Royale is that it didn't list any furry Creator Codes, mostly because I was unaware of any at the time. Also I regret that the list left out King Flamingo, but that's not important.

A Creator Code allows for players purchasing skins and various other cosmetic accouterments to have a portion of their purchase go to a "content creator", usually streamers or YouTube video makers, on the basic idea that whatever content is being created is free advertising for the game. Surely there was a furry streamer of Fortnite out there, somewhere, with a Creator Code?

Nearly five months later, I have stumbled upon a furry with a Creator Code while on e621, of all places. Felino (~Feline-gamer on FurAffinity), a Brazilian furry, has a Creator Code, FelinoJ. Surprisingly, the recognition seems to be for his furry fan-art of various characters from the game, of which is oftentimes very furry.

So, furry Fortnite players, next time you see an item you deem worthy of purchase, consider putting FelinoJ in the Creator Code box. If you're not into Fortnite, but do have an Epic Games Store account, Creator Codes work there, too. Alternatively, if you're not into supporting mega-corporations while supporting furries, Felino also has a Patreon and a Ko-fi.

A furry fan drew an inflated skunk embroidered with the emblem for the Industrial Workers of the World union squishing a hamster in a top hat with the caption of “squash the boss”. Such a piece is not anything too unusual. The oddity that caught the eye of the Daily Dot was that the union itself posted the piece to their Facebook page.

Soon thereafter, the IWW's Twitter account joined in. Though, for some reason, they quietly back out later, as the original Tweet referenced in the Daily Dot article appears to be deleted. (Its text remains in the article despite this – a feature of the standard embedding code for other sites. Tweeters, be wary of this.)

But has furry reached a point where we need to squash the boss and organize? Or are unions barking up the wrong tree? The answer, like the fandom, may be complex.

The winners of the 2019 Best Anthropomorphic Artwork Awards have been announced! There are too many wonderful pieces to show here, so if you have the time, check out the complete list in their Google doc. (Some mild NSFW content.)

The judge's choice winner for 2019 is "Commission for SammyTheTanuki" by Ira-Arn!

And the people's choice winner, which beat the other contenders by a wide margin, is
"Painters" by BubbleWolf.

The other two finalists were "Wildflower" by Neonhorns, and "Adventure awaits!" by Hitmore. There were four runners-up to this category, and over twenty contenders on top of those! A special merit award was given to "Courage on Two Wheels", in honor of Dogbomb.

When it comes to furry artwork, I love to see creativity in detail, mood, backgrounds, world-building and species. I don't follow specific artists, and the high-quality stuff is scattered all over the place, so most of the time I rely on stumbling across artwork I like by accident. Or I find an artist on Fur Affinity who's very good, look at their favorites, and explore sideways. So it's a nice surprise at this time of year to be reminded of the Best Anthropomorphic Artwork Awards, which gives me a fresh starting-point from which to discover new works!

In just a few short weeks we'll be announcing this year's Runner-ups, Finalists, and Winners of the 2019 Best Anthropomorphic Artwork Awards!

We still have a few more contenders to announce before the year is over.

What was -your- favorite anthro art piece of 2019?

The 2000s were not an easy time for those who were furry or gay. The mainstream media was still hyper-focused on the sexual aspects of fandom expression in a freak-show style of coverage, instead of the overall complexity of the community. The ability to marry individuals of the same sex was still not federally recognized in the United States and wouldn’t be until the early 2010s. It was in that era that one furry artist named Rukus took their own life at the end of 2008.

Now, just over a decade later, someone who knew this artist on a personal level has finished a documentary covering the life of their lost friend and their interlude with fandom. That director, Brett Hanover, contacted me and gave me the opportunity to view a screening of the film.

The show releases on Vimeo and their own website today and can be viewed there. You can choose to watch before I go over the details and review below. Though the review may help understand some of the nuances of the film.

A free to view documentary series, edited by Eric Risher and directed by Ash Kreis, was released on Kreis's Youtube channel AshCoyote. Her channel covers nonfiction topics of the furry fandom, while also doing streams of games of furry interest. Funnily since that’s the same kind of content my own channel covers it may seem strange that I’d want to promote their work, however in the non-fiction business it is important to encourage more sharing of information than less. Plus her production value is much higher.

Today we’re going to go over these seven videos. If you like these, then it you should consider throwing a few dollars toward their GoFundMe campaign to produce a full length picture about the fandom they plan on doing. It has 13 days left and is all or nothing, so they have to hit at least $20,000 to get any funding from the campaign. As of writing they don't have much more to go to reach that goal with over $18,000 raised at time of publication.