Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Month: April, 2015

April 7, 2015

French Anthropomorphic Animal Animated Features, Part 3 – by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Series: French Anthropomorphic Animal Animated Features, Part 1 and Part 2.  There will be four parts.

Continuing from where we left off …

l_2279083_8fbe683dLes As de la Jungle – Operation Banquise, directed by David Alaux and Éric Tosti. 58 minutes. December 31, 2011.

When a band of walruses terrorizes the South Pole, stealing the penguins’ eggs, the penguin brother and sister Ping (Tommy) and Pong travel to the jungle where “the Great Tiger Warrior” lives, to ask him to rescue them. The Great Tiger Warrior is Maurice, a penguin raised and striped like a tiger who believes he is one. Maurice agrees, and summons the rest of the Jungle Aces (the Jungle Bunch): Miguel the poetic tap-dancing gorilla, Fred the singing warthog, Gilbert the tiny paranoid tarsier (the brains of the team), Al & Bob, the two frogs of unknown talents, and last but by no means least, Junior the little tiger fish, Maurice’s adopted son (he travels with Maurice in a fishbowl) and kung-fu expert. On their way to Antarctica, they meet and add Batricia, a bat, to the Aces. Each fights the walruses with his or her own specialty, until the grand finale free-for-all. A children’s feature, for the 6+ age group.

Les As de la Jungle – Operation Banquise (The Jungle Aces – Operation Ice), also titled Les As de la Jungle – le Film, was an original CGI feature following David Alaux & Éric Tosti’s Toulouse-based TAT Productions’ Les As de la Jungle TV series of October 23 – November 4, 2011; 26 1½-minute episodes. It was shown as a TV movie on New Year’s Eve 2012, and released theatrically on April 10, 2013. Les As de la Jungle has been popular enough to return as Les As de la Jungle – A la Rescousse (The Jungle Bunch – To the Rescue) in 11-minute TV episodes from December 29, 2013. The movie has been sold as a theatrical or DVD feature to over 150 countries. In the U.S., the feature is a DVD as The Jungle Bunch: The Movie, with John Lithgow voicing Maurice. The movie won the Procirep French TV producers’ award in the animation category; the Audience Awards at the 7th Animpact Max (November 28 – December 2) in Seoul, South Korea and the LUCAS International Children’s Film Festival in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany; and the 2013 Kidscreen Award in New York; and was nominated for a 2014 Emmy.

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April 6, 2015

Vermont town selectively bans fursuiters: Prejudice complaint and update.

by Patch O'Furr

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Public fursuiting with the Vermont Furs.

 

IYCHXufVThe Vermont Furs have an active online presence including Facebook and Twitter. I see many positive events such as BBQ’s, bowling, camping, and a walk to benefit Cystic Fibrosis patients. They look like a fantastic group- the kind that makes me love everything about furries. But their activities are being harmed by treatment they feel is unfair.

Fursuiters kicked out of Mardi Gras event in Burlington, Vermont – but not others dressed in masks.

Why were they being singled out, the furries wanted to know, when the streets were teeming with other strangely dressed revelers?

“It’s just different,” was the response, Owens said.

A thoughtful and well-written article in the independent alt-weekly Seven Days recently covered the February 28 incident, and following talks with the city.  The given reason was a lack of performer permits – (to be clear, none of them were busking or asking for money) – and child safety concerns.

For evidence, there was mention of a bad incident with a costumed “Elmo” Sesame Street character in New York’s Times Square.  I googled the incident as suggested, but it didn’t mention children- only a panhandling offense.  At the Seven Days article, I commented that it was quite a stretch to pick one sensationalized headline from hundreds of miles away, for a “think of the children” argument about people who weren’t hurting anybody.

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April 4, 2015

Furcadia had amazing funding success, so they’re throwing a party for you today.

by Patch O'Furr

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Wikipedia says that Furcadia holds “The Guinness World Records title for the longest continuously running social MMORPG.”  (That’s all the research you get, because I have to post this with mere minutes of preparation! Whee!)

Furcadia’s founder Dr. Cat (AKA Felorin) tells me:

“We hit our $250K funding goal to finish up our 32 bit client, and we’re throwing a HUGE celebration of it this Saturday (April 4)! The team will be live-streaming all day as well as doing stuff in-game, and we’ll be showing off some of the 32 bit editors and artwork we’ve been making, and more.”

More about this news is on their journal.

Their funding appeal achieved it’s highest level, offering stuff like “a full 32-bit client for Windows, new layout & user interface, Redo ALL of the default patch art in full 32-bit,” – new places to explore and more:

$250,000 – Super Super Awesome Bonus Level 

Getting this level of funding would be like a dream come true for us at DEP, Catnip and the whole community. We will all celebrate our accomplishments together!

I said to Dr. Cat: “2400 backers means $100 average, that sounds like a healthy amount each… I’m guessing it’s unexpected and awesome to hit the highest level.  Why now?  How is it budgeted?  Any local connection for this story?”

He said:

“Our core team lives and works in Alamo, California. (I actually commute to San Francisco for a day job at another game company currently.)  That’s Emerald Flame, our Executive Producer & Head Designer and Community Director (along with a lot of other hats), Game Designer Gar, and company founder, President, Programmer, Game Designer Dr. Cat. We manage a team of folks all over the country & the world, all of whom we met originally in Furcadia (that’s where I found Emerald & Gar too!) We have a team member in Southern California too, Ninja – as well as people in Canada, Germany, and England.

Our core team is still paid from Furcadia’s revenues, the Kickstarter & followup fundraiser money has gone entirely to pay a mixed group of a little fulltime staff with a lot of part-timers, commissioned pieces of art, and some volunteers to stretch the money as far as possible. We built Furcadia initially with two people and $50,000 back in the mid 90s, where most MMORPGs took at least a couple million to make, even then. We have a lot of experience getting the most out of a small budget – most game companies would take millions of dollars to do the amount of development work we are squeezing out of $250K. If we didn’t have a lot of people highly passionate about this game & willing to work at a modest rate (and also hugely talented), we couldn’t do what we do.”

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April 4, 2015

The Godson’s Triumph, by M. C. A. Hogarth – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

The Godson’s Triumph, by M. C. A. Hogarth. Illustrations; map by the author.
St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, June 2014, trade paperback $17.95 (viii + 227 pages), Kindle $5.99.

FotGG2_CoverFront_lgBesides being the sequel to Flight of the Godkin Griffin (reviewed on Flayrah on 14 June 2012), this is The Godkindred Saga, Book 2. Collect ‘em all; they are very good reading.

Flight of the Godkin Griffin introduced Mistress Commander Angharad Godkin, a middle-aged griffin (but totally unlike traditional griffins) and her furry world. Angharad is a military commander in the army of her semi-divine sovereign, the Godson, ruler of the greatest (but unofficial) empire this world has ever known. She is also distantly related to the Godson. She expects to retire after a grueling career of conquest. Instead, she is appointed as the new provincial governor of recently-conquered Shraeven. To quote from my review:

“In just the first two pages, Hogarth establishes that this is another world (with three moons), that Angharad can fly (her wings were injured in the battle for Glendallia; also, “A warm breeze presages spring and sweeps my fine hair off my shoulders, tickling my wings.” – Angharad wears a backless blouse with breeches), that the creatures of this world can interbreed and do not look like each other, and that the royal court is REALLY anxious for the politically inexperienced Angharad to take command of the large province of Shraeven (until recently an independent kingdom) as soon as possible. She is promised all the additional troops she wants, a new support staff, an almost unlimited expense account – but she, personally, has to be the new Governor. Angharad suspects that the “newly pacified province” is in fact a hellhole, and that she is expected to fail – but who wants her, personally, to be a scapegoat?”

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April 3, 2015

Publishing for Furries; a Look at Mainstream Writing For and About Furries, by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

This is a companion piece to Fred’s overview of The History of Furry Publishing.  See Part One: Beginnings – and Part Two: Current Publishers.  

This looks beyond publishing by-fans/for-fans, to books you might find in stores.  There are very few because fans make a tiny market for a mainstream publisher.  I’ve often said that I think it’s worth ambitiously hoping for a “Furry Bible” coffee table book (like a Taschen book) worth selling in stores one day.

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Publishing for Furries; a Look at Mainstream Writing For and About Furries.

 

Okay, we’ve covered the specialty furry publishing companies. What furry books have there been from the non-furry publishers?

Most of them are either s-f & fantasy novels about talking animals, or how-to-draw books. You can probably find the former in the Literature or Science Fiction/Fantasy sections of bookstores, and the latter in the Animation or Art sections.

51NXqOETpYLLITERATURE. The s-f & fantasy selection at bookstores is constantly changing. You can usually find such classics as: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll (1865 and 1871); The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame (1908); Animal Farm, by George Orwell (1945); and Watership Down, by Richard Adams (1972), in Classics or Literature.

There have been so many s-f novels over the years that I won’t try to list them all. One that many furry fans have cited as particularly inspiring them is The Pride of Chanur, by C. J. Cherryh (1981). It and its sequels have been reprinted many times, and are likely to be easily available. A more Young Adult fantasy, usually in Children’s Books, is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O’Brien (1971), which will probably always be in print because it won the Newbery Medal.

The only non-furry anthology of furry short stories is Furry!: The World’s Best Anthropomorphic Fiction!, edited by Fred Patten (2006), still in print despite belief in furry fandom that it is out of print today.

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April 2, 2015

Jungle Shuffle – CGI Feature announcement by Fred Patten.

by kiwiztiger

Tip: Courtesy of Ace Eldritch.

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

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The Jungle Shuffle Mystery

We get questions. Patch said, “Someone has just asked me about this…” and sent me a YouTube link to a trailer for Jungle Shuffle. It’s an animated feature full of anthro – red pandas? “Nope. It’s news to me. Let me look into it.”

Okay. Jungle Shuffle, or The Jungle Shuffle, is a 85-minute computer generated imagery (CGI) animated feature, with coatimundis, not red pandas. It was a South Korean and Mexican co-production, directed by Taedong Park and Mauricio de la Orta.

The plot: in 1960 in the dense Lacedon jungle in southern Mexico (the Mayan area), Manu (boy) and Sacha (girl) are two coatimundis in a village tribe led by Sacha’s father. Manu is a typical loner, barely tolerated by anyone but Sacha. Manu’s rival for Sacha’s paw is Artex, a smarmy wise guy who is really trying to become the chief’s successor. Artex persuades the chief to have a big protective totem made to scare off the humans who are starting to invade the jungle. Manu accidentally destroys the totem, and is banished from the coati’s village to live alone in the jungle. When Sacha is captured by the human hunters of Profesor Loco (who is conducting experiments with captured local animals to develop a super-chicken), Manu tries to rescue her; but he runs into Balaam the jaguar, whose mate Kim has also been captured. Manu and Balaam get in each others’ way, resulting in Manu making another enemy. But Manu does mange to rescue a monkey, Chuy (a comic-relief wannabe kung-fu fighter). Together the two manage to rescue both Sacha and Kim, and Manu becomes everyone’s hero.

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April 1, 2015

Frolic’s Menagerie: “the most furry place in the universe” gears up for a new party.

by Patch O'Furr

neonThat’s a grandiose title I gave for a mere dance party.  But give a little credit to the hard working Neonbunny. Or a lot…

Frolic, the party he started in 2010, is fairly called “the original” (for North America, anyways.) It’s inspired an entire movement.  The post-2010 “Furclub” thing is rising with a full-fledged subculture.  Furries aren’t just hosting cons for each other- they’re independently forging a new night life scene, in partnership with adventurous venues.  

Now the original is trying something else. What’s new?

The venue (it’s just a couple of frisky leaps and bounds down the street) – and the attire: “fursuits, leather, harnesses, leashes, kigurmis, rubber, zentai, onesies, body paint, latex, and more.”  OK… like usual, but more so.  You can’t go wrong with that!

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