Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Art

March 18, 2016

How did Disney inspire Furry fandom? A look at early influences by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

How Disney Influenced Furry Fandom is an artist’s thoughts shared in this week’s Newsdump.

(Patch:)  Furry artist Joe Rosales focuses on California fandom in its formative years, including fursuiting.  It concludes that Disney should get major credit.  I liked it, but it doesn’t give enough credit for sci fi fandom, and misses early fursuiters like Robert Hill who were not professional (and not G-rated, either.)  The unnamed animator must be Shawn Keller, maker of the notorious Furry Fans flash animation and comic.  (If he didn’t want to be named, he shouldn’t have published “Shawn Keller’s Horrifying Look at The Furries.“)

I sent it to Fred Patten and asked for his thoughts.  In between, a similar media article happened on a psychic wavelength:

VICE: Furries Love Zootopia.

Here’s what Fred wrote in response to the first one.

(Fred:) This is very good, but you’re giving Disney credit for too much influence.

First, define early furry fandom. 1980 to … 1983? 1985? 1990? Don’t forget, by 1980 and for the next decade, Walt Disney and the Disney Studio were pretty much Old History. Carl Barks was retired. In comics, Marvel’s Howard the Duck (Steve Gerber), DC’s Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! (Scott Shaw!), and Pacific Comics’ Destroyer Duck (Jack Kirby) were the New Wave; the new influences. In underground comix, there were Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. In independent comics, there were Steve Leialoha and Michael Gilbert in Quack!.  … (Fred, what about the great Bucky O’Hare comic? – Patch)

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March 14, 2016

Syrians, Zootopians, and all the love in the media – NEWSDUMP (3-15-16)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. Thanks to Dronon for editing help!

furparazzi5Furry Media Events have never been so frequent!

Big stories come in clusters.  A blog reports something, more blogs catch on, and the story trades up to syndicated news. In Furry fandom, that used to happen maybe once a year… and that could be predictable stories about Anthrocon.

Dogpatch Press is only 2 years old, but there’s been a noticeable spike. There was the chlorine attack at MFF. #TonyTigerGate hit the “weird news” section. Not 6 weeks later, there’s THREE in the same week – Zootopia marketing to Furries; Syrian refugees at VancouFur; and notices for the Fursonas documentary.

It’s so much that you get two Newsdumps this week.  Soon: “all the controversy in the media”.  The pace makes it hard to keep up with the Year Of Furry!

Zootopia marketing to Furries – (Look for another article about this soon.)

It blew up with a Buzzfeed column full of fetish-snark: Proof Disney Is Actually Marketing “Zootopia” To Furries.

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February 10, 2016

New episodes from Culturally F’d: Twisted Tempting Furry Demons!

by Patch O'Furr

If culturallyfdyou’re not reading Dogpatch Press, you should be watching Culturally F’d!  It’s the Furry youtube series that asks:

Where does the love of anthropomorphics come from? How far back can we dig in history and mass media to really get to the bottom of it? Why does every culture across the face of the earth have a fascination with animal-people?

Here’s what’s been going on with Culturally F’d in the past month:

Episode 20: Tempting St. Anthony

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January 26, 2016

Fred Patten discusses history of adult and mature cartoons in response to Zootopia article.

by Patch O'Furr

Yesterday’s extra long post about Zootopia described complicated relationships between fans and marketers, and asked: are they intentionally winking at furries, but keeping it hidden?  According to Fred’s wisdom, the sensitivity is nothing new.  

a2

Dear Patch;

Cartoon Brew’s article described the petition against fan pornography of Disney’s forthcoming Zootopia and the reaction to the subject.

What seems most interesting to me is the apparent assumption that furry fandom (and people in general) are just discovering the pornography of high-profile animated cartoon characters with Zootopia.  Doesn’t anyone remember the furry fan pornography of Warner Bros.’ Tiny Toon Adventures TV series in the early 1990s, with the series’ own emphasis on gags about Buster Bunny’s not wearing any pants? It faded away after the program went off the air. It’s discussed in Reading the Rabbit by Kevin Sandler, an anthology of articles about Warners’ cartoon characters from Rutgers University Press.

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November 17, 2015

Wombats pooping cubes – and a chunky blast of furry news! NEWSDUMP (11/17/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

Atlas Obscura – The Fursuit of Happiness Begins With Customized Dog Abs.  It’s a nicely written curiosity piece about what fursuit makers do.  There needs to be a Tip Sheet for Journalists Who Want To Write About Furries.  It would say “quit using that title.”

Austrian “Furry News” site Furry Stammtische shares a long TV feature of fursuiters. Google translate can give you a rough understanding of the story.

Fangcon gets a little slice-of-life mention in Knoxville news.  Writer bumps into fursuiters at an outdoor concert, and gets charmed.

Courting Comedy blog reviews a live talk show in San Francisco, with a special Furry guest speaker. “They defanged prejudices or assumptions about the Furry community, and was cautious to not speak for the entirety of his tribe.” Really happy to see this.

Furry Site Content Statistics – and a possible game changing new art site.  [Adjective][Species] presents comparison of 5 established sites – and Flayrah’s Sonious writes up Furry Network with some details that could be highly worth your attention.

VICE is digging on DeviantArt for unusual furry fetishes.  This fellow fan enjoys expressing “objectophilia”. He has a rewarding relationship with his car.  Thanks for visiting our garden, Vice – lots of special varieties grow here, but don’t poop in it.

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September 11, 2015

The Art of Regular Show – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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


The Art of Regular Show, by Shannon O’Leary. Foreword by J. G. Quintel. Introduction by Paula Spence.
London, Titan Books, September 2015, hardcover $29.95 (160 pages).Regular show Cover

Lavish coffee-table animation art books are usually the prerogative of theatrical features from major animation studios like Disney, DreamWorks Animation, and Pixar; not a TV cartoon series from a studio like Cartoon Network. Yet if any TV cartoon series has earned that accolade, Regular Show has. The prime-time (7:30 p.m.; new episodes on Thursdays, reruns the rest of the Monday-Saturday week) half-hour program of two 11-minute episodes began on September 6, 2010, and is still going strong with 195 episodes (nine seasons) scheduled so far, and a made-for-TV feature, Regular Show: The Movie, due on November 25, 2015. Episode #58, “Eggscellent” by Regular Show creator J. G. Quintel, won a 2013 Emmy Award in the Outstanding Short-format Animated Program category; and various other episodes have been nominated for Annie, Emmy, Teen Choice, and other American and British TV awards. There have been a Regular Show monthly comic book since May 2013; and video games, action figures, plush dolls, bobbleheads, T-shirts, and more. Read the rest of this entry »

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August 20, 2015

Don Oriolo’s Felix the Cat Art Available Nationally – announcement by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Exclusive Felix the Cat Fine Artwork from Don Oriolo Coming Soon from Soho Prints (PRNewsFoto/Soho Art International/Soho Prin)We get mail. In this case, a press release with a cover letter.

Hi Fred:

Saw that you covered my client Don Oriolo’s Felix Art last year and thought you might like to see our press release from today and possibly cover that?  Let me know if you need anything on this.

Best, Scott

He must be referring to my book review on Flayrah last year, of Don Oriolo’s Felix the Cat Paintings.

And here is the press release. Felix was the first star of anthropomorphic animal animated cartoons in the 1920s, so it’s pertinent even if limited to modern art.

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June 26, 2015

Animation Show of Shows – Yiff vs. Murr – History of faux fur – Newsdump (6/25/15)

by Patch O'Furr

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.Screen Shot 2015-06-25 at 3.33.32 PM

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.)

Now, The Animation Show of Shows is appealing for support for their amazing art cause.

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.

Knoxville, TN has furries in their Pride parade.  Draconis, Chair of Fangcon, reports: Read the rest of this entry »

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June 13, 2015

French anthro comic: De Cape et de Crocs. T. 11, Vingt Mois Avant – review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Previously: De Cape et De Crocs is back! French anthro comic announcement, by Fred Patten.

De Cape et de Crocs. T. 11, Vingt Mois Avant, by Alain Ayroles & Jean-Luc Masbou.
Paris, Delcourt, November 2014, hardbound €14,50 (48 pages).

1590_couvThe book has a back-cover quote from Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac’s 1654 comic play Le Pédant Joué that roughly translates as, “What the devil are you going to do with this mess?” An excellent question, both for this book and to indicate the setting.

“The faithful rabbit Eusebius, once sentenced to life imprisonment, finally reveals his past.” (blurb) The De Cape et de Crocs series (With Cape and Fangs) has been set in a mid-17th-century Europe (and on the Moon), starring the gentlemen-adventurers Sieur Armand Raynal de Maupertuis (anthro French fox) and Don Lope de Villalobos y Sangrin (Spanish wolf). In the first “Act”, The Janissary’s Secret, they rescue Eusebius, the cutest bunny-rabbit in the world, from life imprisonment as a Venetian galley-slave. Eusebius becomes their loyal squire all through Europe (and on the Moon) in the next nine, but he never reveals how he came to be chained as a rower in a Venetian war galley.

With “Act” 11, the series switches to Eusebius’ story before he met Sieur Armand and Don Lope. The setting is Vingt Mois Avant – Twenty Months Earlier. This pastiche of Alexandre Dumas’ title of his famous sequel to his The Three Musketeers, Vingt Ans Après, establishes this bande dessinee’s new direction as both a parody of French 17th-century heroic action-adventure in general and of The Three Musketeers in particular.

Eusebius is not only the cutest bunny-rabbit in the world, he is the most naîve. He does not set out, as d’Artagnan does, to join the King’s Guard, but the Cardinal’s Guard! The King and the Cardinal are friends, aren’t they? Eusebius is introduced on page 1 as addressing a field full of peasant serfs as “My good men”, a well-meaning insult to them. The story, and Eusebius’ prospects, go downhill from there.

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May 25, 2015

Scale’s paintings push the limits of furry art, with surprising mainstream crossover.

by Patch O'Furr

(NSFW – nude paintings below!)

In “Furry Good Ideas“, Scale commented on my suggestion about starting a Furry art gallery: 

scaleNot sure if the times are ripe for a dedicated furry art gallery, but for what it’s worth I’m having some success entering furry paintings in local art shows… I’m also making a bet that a market niche for paintings actually exists within the the fandom and that a decent number of fans would like to own furry art which can be displayed alongside other kinds of art. The results are very encouraging so far.

The article was meant to encourage feedback like this, revealing a cool new story. Nice to meet you, Scale!

Scale does classical style anthropomorphic figure painting.  Public display of his work puts him in a favorite focus of this blog: crossover.  He isn’t just showing regular fantasy art to the public, either.  It’s both painterly, and super hot!  It’s the best of both worlds.  Look at the dragoness below… the attitude, the pose, the voluptuous sculpted butt… excuse me while I fan my face for a minute.

I’m happy to share this as a nice surprise to the chairman of Eurofurence.  He commented on my article about Biohazard’s crossover art stunt:Screen Shot 2015-05-11 at 5.43.25 PM

We’re seeing a little subcultural eruption, from as far across the line of “low art” as you can get.  Scale’s art is pushing limits.  His cool, thoughtful style speaks of Old Master sensibility, but the hot-blooded subjects are a weird combination that makes sparks.  Isn’t that what art is for?  The way people respond to it brings interesting thoughts about art meaning:

The bunny painting was accepted in the show without any problem. I keep finding evidence that most non-furries don’t read a picture like that one as a sexy pinup… I suspect most people just see it as a parody of human nudes.

OK, it’s sexy to furry fans (5,000 on his popular FurAffinity account), but he thinks it doesn’t communicate like that to the “normal” public.  Is that a failure?  Would they show it if it doesn’t speak to them?  It has to work as simply good painting.  It’s an example for furry artists: don’t make good furry art – make good art. Read the rest of this entry »

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