Mascot art, business, culture, and a Hall of Fame to celebrate it all.
Let’s peer into the strange, distant futureworld of 2017.
How much respect do mascots get? It’s kind of a stereotype that they deserve mocking and noogies from jocks. Some would say that enjoying mascots too much is like loving the sauce while ignoring the main course. They might consider it ridiculous to give sole focus for celebration of mascots.
Now there’s a whole institution for that. The Mascot Hall of Fame was founded by David Raymond, the original Phillie Phanatic from 1978-1993. It’s been around since 2005 in online-only form. Now it’s getting a 25,000 square-foot building in Whiting, Indiana. (With the crowd capacity of this place, imagine a jock giving noogies to so many thousands of mascot lovers- his arms would fall off.) Read the rest of this entry »
Good examples of fursuiting crossover with pro sports.
I have to admit not knowing a lot about commercial mascotting. But here’s some quick comparison with the amateur hobby kind. At Amazing-Mascots.com, you can get a feel for how major teams and companies commission the pro makers.
Amazing Mascots is a company with a 15,000 foot warehouse, and a team of seasoned professionals boasting decades of mascotting and designing experience. They quote multiplied prices ($4000-12,000) compared to costume makers inside fandom.
Our own fursuit makers charge as little as $2000 and typically do it from a craft room at home. But their craft often beats the pros, doesn’t it? They do it for love as much as money. So value their skills and personal relationships with them, and give them love back.
On to the examples of how hobbyists are reaching the level of pros…
Wolf mascot for Moscow’s Dynamo hockey team – made in 2013 by Mixedcandy.
Even if the Dynamo NHL team was in the USA – I wouldn’t know anything about them. But I would know the work of Mixedcandy. There must be an interesting story about how they commissioned this and why. I wouldn’t expect a pro team to approach a hobby community just to save a couple grand! (Pic: LatinVixen on FurAffinity. More at the Dynamo Instagram page.)
The National Mascot Hall of Fame is coming in 2017. This mainstream event might deserve attention from furries. Will hobby costumers indirectly benefit from the millions of investment and hype?
Sci-fi costuming and mascots probably developed separately. But some fursuiting is showing up in pro sports. Anthrocon had the San Diego Chicken as Guest Of Honor. A mascot was a viral sensation of the 2015 Super Bowl. Can we look forward to more crossover? Is this part of mainstreaming furries, with stuff like Disney’s Zootopia?
I have to admit that sports isn’t my thing. Ritualistically chasing a stuffed spheroid doesn’t set my curiosity on fire. Whenever I see a sportsball game, it seems quite possible, even unavoidable that one of the teams or the other is going to win. What’s the big deal?
However, even if the physical spectacle isn’t my thing, I can at least admire the ideals of positive team competition, and strength and bravery.
In ancient times, feats of strength were amazing. Muscle helped you to build shelter to protect you from hungry lions or the angry gods. Bravery in the hunt was amazing too. It was better to feed the tribe with antelope steaks than with bugs and berries.
But in modern times, you don’t need strength for that stuff. Use a forklift or order a pizza. Physical feats don’t impress me as much as they should.
Of course, I’ll take an invite to hang out with sports-loving friends if there’s beers and chatting. I have nothing against a good spectacle or playing outside. I just have different priorities.
I like creative and intellectual pursuits that help us evolve beyond the stone age, or even the silicon age – towards whatever comes next. (Like maybe a Mad Max future, where the most popular sport is watching cyborgs with chainsaw arms do gladiator battle.)
Mascots are fun and creative. I like their designs and how they act. Let’s talk about what they mean and where they came from. Plug your brain into the matrix, and let me take you back to the Pre-Furry Past… and beyond the horizon of time, to the incomprehensibly distant futureworld of 2017.
Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag. Guest posts welcome. Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com.
Patreon Hacked, Furries blamed, journalist downloads porn for “work”.
Patreon user info was compromised by a security breach. A Twitter user claiming responsibility offered an online-politics grudge motive, and shared claims that Patreon account data was being misused by the “Yiff.party” website. The prankish claim seems really far fetched to me up front, and the site itself denies any responsibility. But the prank was successful enough to convince the journalist (for a big digital media brand) to download from the site, and seriously report finding nothing but sexy animals.
UT club encourages students to find ‘fursonas’
Whines, from FA.
A standard introduction article from the University of Texas at Austin student newspaper. It adds nothing unexpected, but reads nicely. Congrats to the Longhorn Furs social club.
They have involvement with Whines. It led me to learn the info below, and request a submission for The Furclub Survey of Furry dance parties. Expect more about it soon.
Starting in 2013 and inspired by descriptions of the Frolic in California, Whines started organizing small furry dance events and has held them once every 2-3 months since them. They tend to have an attendance in the 20-40 range with a handful of fursuiters. Most recently the dance was held on UT campus in partership with the University of Texas ‘Longhorn Furs‘ group.
Demand from devoted fans is bringing back the Swat Kats TV series for the first time in 20 years. Fandom kept the show alive since it was canceled in 1994 with only two seasons. If you missed it, here’s the lowdown from Swatkats.info:
Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag. Guest posts welcome. “Local correspondents” wanted to talk about your local networks.
This week’s Newsdump: Everything Anthrocon! There was SO MUCH of this news, and it was such a busy month, that I will be playing catch-up for a while with it… I’m not able to read all of these links. Good job catching all this attention, AC! Has there ever been this much? Some of it is national (the Onion A.V. Club and NPR notice seems particularly cool.) It was quite a coup to parade outside on the Pittsburgh street for the first time. 5,000 regular public watchers came out to see the furries, and they went nuts for it. I hope the crowd doubles in the future. I’d love to interview Uncle Kage about the planning and reception. (Official Anthrocon wrapup report.)
The official count of members in the Anthrocon 2015 Fursuit Parade Group Photo is 1,460. This reminded me of a neat aspect of the con. All that show value! These costumes represent so much investment… we could do a few estimates to figure out how much. In a previous post, “$3 million sale raises furry auction topic”, I came up with an arbitrary $2,320.51 per fursuit represented in Anthrocon’s parade. Multiply by the count of 1,460 members this year to reach a (rough guesstimate) value of $3,387,944.60 in fursuits.
Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag. Tips are always welcome.
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Media and Fandom News
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The Animation Show of Shows: There’s no better source for artistic animation, and they need support.
This touring show presents the best of the best in the world of short films, by the most talented directors. It’s ordinarily only seen by invite at top movie studios (your Pixars and so forth), and at colleges, with special public access to those who hear through word of mouth. You may not have heard of it, because it’s been a personal project funded by one amazing guy, Ron. (He also runs Acme Filmworks, who directed a good couch gag for The Simpsons.)
I don’t ordinarily post crowd funding (too much to cover!) Leave that to awesome Furry journalist Corbeau at Furstarter. (We need more “furry news” specialists.) This is just an exceptional cause. If you like animation, don’t miss it.
Through this show, I discovered the hilarious short, Flamingo Pride. It shows what happens to the only heterosexual flamingo at the birds celebration. It’s almost as fabulous as the San Francisco Bay Furries will be this weekend, in the SF Pride parade.
Wikipedia says thatFurcadia 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.”
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.”
Commercialization makes some furries fear losing what they love. But the normals-scaring, freedom-raising, limit-pushing, WTF part of it may save the rest. The more fringe it is – the more it holds Furry back from acceptance, but keeps it strongly independent. More notice could be a win-win.
While seeking graphics, I just noticed they tweeted me from Fur Con in January! (Not endorsement, just spreading furriness.) Yay! Can you spot me among the eye-blasting pink, sparkles and rainbows? I was in camo.
This is for both IMVU and Dragoneer (Mr. Piche). I assume that some details may be kept private. I’ll build a news article from the answers, aiming for positive information not gossip. I’m curious to know: 1) The story of how IMVU and FurAffinity came together. 2) Terms of ownership now. 3) The future and your roles in leading users.
They responded to my long list:
Attached is the interview completed by Sean Piche, Fur Affinity Community Leader, IMVU; Kevin Henshaw, SVP Business Development, IMVU; and Varsha Pande, Director, Community Experience and User Safety. You’ll note a few of your questions were left unanswered as a matter of company disclosure policy. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about the Fur Affinity acquisition.
Mascot art, business, culture, and a Hall of Fame to celebrate it all.
