Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Mainstream

March 30, 2015

IMVU does a Q&A with me. Part 2 about the sale of FurAffinity.

by Patch O'Furr

A series of three articles:

 

  1. About the FurAffinity sale, and the issue of trade-offs.
  2. IMVU does a Q&A with me.
  3. Community > Commodity, and the Value of WTF.  Long live furries.

The conclusion brings it all back to commercialization.  I’ve reported this for a while:  Measuring the Furry Economy. – Mainstream advertising: “More and more, Furries are being hinted at in marketing media!” – And the recent $11,575 record fursuit sale and $17,500 top price. Also try: Furry, not an obscure little fandom any more.  I often say that the thriving growth of this subculture is built on WTF weirdness that can’t be digested by the mainstream.  Will that stay true?

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2) Speaking with IMVU.

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FurAffinity just posted a Q&A with IMVU’s CEO Brett Durrett.  A furry responded: Ashamed for the fandom; an apology to CEO Brett Durrett. 

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.

My Q&A started:

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.

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March 29, 2015

Fur Dance news – musicians and authors discover furries. Newsdump (3/29/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Tips are always welcome. 

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Fandom News

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San Francisco and “Furclub” activity.

Organizers let me have an inside view of the second Wild Things party coming up in April in San Francisco.  November’s first event caused high traffic here and was a great success. Look for an update soon.

There was talk about Frolic dance party attracting furries for 5+ hour driving from Southern California. They have the long running Prancing Skiltaire house party, but they say they don’t have anything like Frolic.  Carloads have been coming more and more often.  They’re considering getting a bus.  Every month, 300+ attendees have been packing the dance to capacity.  The “furclub” movement is growing all over the place.  Organizer Neonbunny is open to lend the name to anyone who wants to use it.  In Europe, Cologne Fur Dance is said to draw 5-600 goers for two dances a year since 2008.

download (1)Author of “Funnybooks” learns what Furry Fandom is.

Fred Patten’s review got back to the author:

And for a review of Funnybooks written from a different perspective, that of “furry fandom,” let me refer to you Fred Patten’s review at this link. What is “furry fandom,” you may ask? I’m really not quite sure how to describe it, even though the phenomenon has attracted growing media coverage. Best you visit Fred’s “Dogpatch Press” site and explore “furry fandom” for yourself. Fred says of Funnybooks that it’s “the story of the comic-book publisher whose works did more than any others’ to inspire furry fandom,” and that should give you a clue as to what “furry fandom” is all about.

Remember Shawn Keller’s Horrifying Look at the Furries?

It’s been a long time, but he’s making new animation. Gorgeous!  Check his history to see a cartoon series he started 7 months earlier.

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March 27, 2015

FurAffinity’s new ownership makes a turning point. Should fans fear commercialization?

by Patch O'Furr

(Via Greenreaper):

Screen Shot 2015-03-20 at 6.46.18 PM

From 2008.  Anthrocon has grown to generate $7 million in 2014.

From 2008.  Anthrocon has grown to generate $7 million in 2014.

A comment from 8Chan:

The furry community is loaded with cash compared to other niche internet communities and it’s been exploding in popularity over the last decade. Nowadays it’s becoming more apparent with kickstarter and patreon making the figures public and internet companies are starting to move in on their turf to get a cut before it really goes mainstream.

And for those doubting that it’s about to enter the mainstream just wait until “Zootopia” from Disney comes out in 2016. Even Marvel giving prominent roles to a furry character in their recent major Hollywood movie would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, people who study the furry phenomenon are expecting it to explode soon. Universities and marketing groups are preforming surveys and studies on the fandom, this is considered a legitimate field of study.

A series of three articles:

 

  1. About the FurAffinity sale, and the issue of trade-offs.
  2. IMVU does a Q&A with me.
  3. Community > Commodity, and the Value of WTF.  Long live furries.

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March 24, 2015

Chat with Strypes, Edmonton Oil Kings mascot performer and fursuit referee.

by Patch O'Furr

Here’s a followup post to:  Edmonton Oil Kings hockey hosts fursuiter race. “It’s looking hairy at ice level!”

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On January 2, 2015, the Edmonton Oil Kings hosted a fursuit race at their hockey game.  The “Frantic Furry 500″ entertained the crowd during intermissions.  It was organized by Strypes, (AKA bcbreakaway). It was incredibly cool of Strypes to answer my questions about the event and his furry activities.  I was surprised to find out that he seems to have discovered this fandom only two years ago – and he’s a professional mascot who already had the spirit inside.  Give him a high-paw for being an amazing example of why Furries rock! 

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March 20, 2015

IMVU’s big buy-in. These messages sponsored by hugs and scritches. Newsdump (3/20/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Tips are always welcome. 

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Fandom News

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FurAffinity sold to 3D social network IMVU.  

downloadYou heard, right?  FurAffinity is the shaky but most active anchor for furry socializing and art.  Naughty stuff on it can’t go without mention.  That makes it a haven for freedoms that make the community what it is, for good or ill (depending on how prudish you are.)  The sale to IMVU comes as a surprise.  It’s a bold move for a company to partner with a community with stigma attached.  How well will this work?

In January, IMVU reached out to me. They got an article about their appearance at Fur Con.   (It was before today’s news was public, but apparently around when FurAffinity was sold.)  I got back in touch with their rep, and have a confirmation that they’ll answer my questions.  Everyone’s yapping about it – more soon in a followup article.

4 fursuits stolen from Jakedashep. Send hugs.

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March 19, 2015

Ribbit – animated movie review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Ribbit, directed by Chuck Powers. 88 minutes. September 4, 2014.

This CGI animated feature was released theatrically in Malaysia, in Malay, on September 4, 2014. But I saw it at my sister’s on On Demand TV in English on January 16, 2015.

It is not the worst movie that I have ever seen, but it comes close.

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March 12, 2015

SEX! Researchers, journalists, and furries debate The Topic They Love To Hate.

by Patch O'Furr

Just published in the media: SF IS A HOTBED OF ONE KINKY-CREEPY-CUTE SUBCULTURE. And: SAN FRANCISCO – A FURRY FETISH EPICENTER.  More on that shortly.  (I apologize if this post is jumbled to read all at once- a lot of related topics just happened.)

1) Researcher Debra Soh recently wrote about Furries in Harper’s Magazine.  I invited her to submit a piece here.  She sent:

“A Lesson Everyone Can Learn from Furries”

 

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March 11, 2015

Animation remakes: Watership Down, NIMH, DuckTales, Dumbo, more. Newsdump (3/11/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Tips are always welcome. 

The Tufts Daily goes to a furry convention.

Anthro New England gets a good college news piece.  My Newsdump gathers links as news happens, but it’s interesting there’s no other media articles this time!

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Comics/animation: “who likes remakes?”

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I hope you like remakes, because it seems there’s no stopping the onslaught…

New images for Disney’s Zootopia.

i09 shares an update from what may be the new furriest movie ever, scheduled for 2016.  “Taken from the Disney Facebook page, these new Zootopia images reveal these animals have designed their buildings and bridges look like their own furry appendages.”

Hulu’s docuseries “Behind the Mask” stars pro mascots.

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March 10, 2015

Between The Crow and Dark City, movie maker Alex Proyas had a lost project, revealed here.

by Patch O'Furr

Do those titles perk your ears up?  They had major impact on cult movies from the 1990’s to now.  The Crow won a new level of respect for comic-based movies, which had never been so dark before.  (The soundtrack alone was a gateway for countless black-clad kids.)  Then, Dark City created a visionary sci-fi dystopia world with only a handful to compare: like Brazil, The City of Lost Children, or Blade Runner.  It was stellar work from director Alex Proyas.  1994-1998 may have been his peak (so far.)download (2)

There was supposed to be a movie in between: an adaptation of Freak’s Amour, an obscure but highly praised cult novel by Tom De Haven.  It was optioned and scripted for Proyas.  The project fell by the wayside for two sad reasons.  One was aftershocks from the tragic death of Brandon Lee on set of The Crow. The other was critical success but financial failure for Dark City. Even though it’s called the best movie by Proyas, it hurt his career.  It was triumph and tragedy.  A year later, The Matrix came along (sharing studio and style) and won all the attention. Dark City has continued to influence movies like Inception.

Proyas followed up with 3 features that got mixed reviews.  There’s mentions of a number of projects in development.  The next one for sure is Gods of Egypt in 2016. (Hey furries, I wonder if there will be characters like Anubis?)

As far as I can tell, almost nobody in the fan world has talked about this lost movie project. (As a fan of the novel, I’d never known about it until now!) Stories like this are why I blog.

It’s an indirect topic for a Furry blog.  The anthropomorphism is Monster Movie style – not funny animals.  This is for sci-fi fans in general, especially ones for the niche called Body Horror. But it’s inspired by comics, and it’s relevant.

“…The story of Freak’s Amour is, in it’s own way, a story of body dysphoria.” – Dana Marie Andra, artist for the comic.

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More about the underappreciated “Freak’s Amour”, by Tom De Haven- and what Tom told me about the movie project.

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March 9, 2015

French Anthropomorphic Animal Animated Features, Part 2 – by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Previously: French Anthropomorphic Animal Animated Features, Part 1.  There will be four parts.

Continuing from where we left off …

12862-b-le-chateau-des-singesLe Château des Singes (The Castle of Monkeys), directed by Jean-François Laguionie. 76 minutes. June 2, 1999.

Kom, a brash young monkey, is a member of the Woonko tribe which lives in the treetops, believing that the earth below them is inhabited by demons. Kom scoffs at this, and generally makes himself unpopular. One day he accidentally falls to the ground, where he meets the Lankoo tribe; monkeys like himself. He falls in love with Gina and is adopted into the Lankoos, although Gina is repelled by his boastfulness. But Kom and Gina become enmeshed in Lankoo politics when they discover that Sebastian the Chancellor is plotting to kill the king, poison Princess Ida, and rule with Ida’s evil governess. They are too late to save the king, but they expose the plotters and save Ida, who becomes the new queen. Kom brings Gina back to the Woonkos, where they will work to unify the two monkey tribes

Laguionie is an international award-winning animation director whose previous shorts and feature did not include any anthro animals. His second feature (international title: A Monkey’s Tale) won the Best Animated Feature Film award at the 5th Kecskemét (Hungary) Animation Film Festival, and was the first to bring him international attention.

A Monkey’s Tale website – Full movie:

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