Zoion, a magazine to promote furry art, is launching on Kickstarter.
by Patch O'Furr
Postcards handed out at Furry Weekend Atlanta
On Kickstarter: an Anthropomorphic Art Magazine is being launched by Zoion Media and its creator Pulsar. (It ends on April 29, so don’t wait to support.)
Our goal is to create a contemporary, well designed, image-driven magazine focusing on clean, evocative, highly artistic, well developed and well executed anthropomorphic art and themes. We want to make something the average furry is proud to show their non-furry friends to give them an idea of what furry art is all about.
Pulsar talked about inspiration for a print magazine to promote furry fandom creators and artists:
“I’ve always been an artist and I read a lot on contemporary fine art. I remember standing in the bookstore browsing Juxtapoz and Hi-Fructose and thinking, ‘there needs to be something just like this for furry art’.”
Those names stood out to me. So did the focus on clean art. That sounds smart for professional reasons. If it open-mindedly supports creators who do adult art elsewhere (which includes Pulsar himself), that could make a needed gateway between fandom and the mainstream, where the word “furry” is less sensitive.
Zoion is meant to feature strong curation and professional execution to appeal both inside and outside of fandom. Although it’s visually driven, it can be for more than art, too – like writing about creative process, artist profiles and interviews, themed media reviews, and critical analysis.
Pulsar has a blog piece that talks about rationale for the project. (He’ll share more aspects of design and planning there). He says:
…the fandom has been growing rapidly and has also been getting more mainstream attention. The tone of that attention has shifted as well, from the CSI days of furry being known exclusively as this weird fetishy thing, to more journalists, charities, and internet denizens standing up to defend furries when they come up in threads or news.
…I believe this desire for legitimacy in the furry fandom means it’s right time to launch that idea for an anthro art magazine I had five years ago.
There’s a precedent for mainstream crossover. In 2016, furry artist Onta (of porn site Hardblush.com) featured in mainstream comic anthology Island, from Image Comics. (Read an interview about it with Onta by Bessie, an occasional Dogpatch Press contributor.)
I rarely do headlines about crowdfunding, but publishing is special to me. Last week, that included a furry photo art book project, “At Home With the Furries” by Tom Broadbent. It succeeded with raising over $13,000. It’s a great time for this stuff, with Joe Strike’s Furry Nation being a milestone too. I think investing effort for real, physical media is a step beyond fandom into a movement. That’s why I’m happy to see the term “art movement” explicitly associated with Zoion.
Furry art is one of the first, and quite possibly the largest art movement to exist primarily as new media. This is a big reason we feel a print magazine is a great idea. Here's our take:https://t.co/f6JP2sRWz7
— Zoion (@ZoionMedia) April 3, 2018
Pulsar added:
“I think there’s a real desire in the furry fandom to be able to talk more openly about furry as an interest or a hobby. But pointing friends to a website or Twitter account can be difficult because furries tend to mix styles, types, and levels of maturity in their art,” Pulsar said. “Zoion would provide a way to showcase the best of anthro art in one place, in a way that’s not being done on any other platform.”
Zoion Media is soliciting for artists and creators who want to participate. To be considered, visit zoionmedia.com and find “Submission Info” to submit.
The Ursa Major Award’s Best Anthropomorphic Published Illustration category should fit into this somehow.
They might want to choose a title that doesn’t look like a typo of “Zion.”
Hmm… zoo (as in zoology) + zion (as in spiritual homeland) seems like a fine title to me. Zion was a name in the Matrix movies too, it it really unsuitable for a fantasy context?
Zoion looks fine to me. Zoo as in zoology + ion (sounds scientific).
Pulsar, I’ve looked at your site and read the “Print Lives” story and would ask, can you point to any examples of existing magazines that you might take as models for your publication? One mag that I would recommend is Verynearlyalmost (verynearlyalmost.com) a mag from the U.K. that’s about street art. I buy several copies a year from a local bookstore. My favorite is probably their number 23 issue which is heavy on the animal themed art.
Also, I’m curious, can you describe some characteristics of potential purchasers of Zoion? It does seem to me that there’s alot of competition for furry dollars, euros, pesos, etc. these days and it might be hard to keep up sales if the shine of the new starts to fade. Personally I probably would buy your product, especially if I could look at it at a con dealers table.
Oh shazbut!! * I wondered why I hadn’t seen VNA all last year and now find out that their last issue was January ’17. There are back issues available, maybe even in a library if you’re in a big city or a college library.
* an expression of frustration uttered by famous television sitcom personality “Mork”, played by Robin Williams, dog bless him.
Shazbut!? I prefer “Yarst!” A traditional s-f fandom expletive of frustration, exasperation, & annoyance. I think that I encountered it sometime around the 1960s in a s-f fanzine.