Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: adult swim

A furry pilgrimage to the Adult Swim Festival and the Prancing Skiltaire house, Part 3.

by Patch O'Furr

Part 1Part 2Part 3

Here’s Part 3 for yesterday’s article, which asked: If you could do a furry travel tour, where would you go? When I got invited to the Adult Swim Festival in Los Angeles for their second animation/comedy/music event, I added a side trip to the nearby Prancing Skiltaire house. That’s a shrine to cartoon animal art made by the founders of the first furry con, who open it to fans by the hundreds. It was all started by an invite from “Dr. Girlfriend.”

Fan video screening at the Prancing Skiltaire

House resident Changa showed parody videos where he recut Disney’s Zootopia to emulate iconic TV show openings. There’s a channel of them that goes with curating videos for Furry.Today, one of many projects run from the house including The Confurence Archive, InFurNation and the Ursa Major Awards.

What Dr. Girlfriend says about visiting:

Going to the “iconic” furry house was interesting. Rod gave Patch & I the “nickel tour” which was awesome! What stood out to me was the vast collection of animal characters, including: ceramics, plushies, anime, drawings, zines, videos & so much more.

They told me that they have furry parties every month that have gotten to around 300 people! Whoah. Also that the local In-N-Out restaurant banned the furries from congregating there because their patio was so small. Hehe. I know a little about being kicked out of venues (public spaces?) as someone who helps organize Bike Parties, which sometimes get into the thousands of bicycle riders having a dance party on the street.

Anyways, everyone was super friendly and they even had Christmas furry art up (before Thanksgiving, but who’s counting?) These guys are immersed in the culture, and there’s even a documentary coming out about the fur-dorks that I got a mini sneak peak of! Look forward to The Fandom in 2020!

The self-proclaimed “dorks” and originators of some of the first furry cons and Prancing Skiltaire house gave us an interesting and informative look into the heart & love & art that goes into a fandom. Also we got dinner together and it was delicious and full of great conversation and good vibes.

Read the rest of this entry »

A furry pilgrimage to the Adult Swim Festival and the Prancing Skiltaire house, Part 2.

by Patch O'Furr

Part 1Part 2Part 3

Here’s Part 2 of yesterday’s article, which asked: If you could do a furry travel tour, where would you go? It could include conventions, mainstream destinations, and special stops that a non-furry wouldn’t think of. When I got invited to the Adult Swim Festival in Los Angeles for their second animation/comedy/music event, I made it a mainstream AND fandom mini-tour, with a side trip to the nearby Prancing Skiltaire house. That’s a shrine to cartoon animal art made by the founders of the first furry con, who open it to fans by the hundreds. It was all started by an invite from “Dr. Girlfriend.”

Festival review from Dr. Girlfriend:

The Adult Swim Festival in Los Angles was sooo much fun! I went with Patch (who was in fursuit) as Dr. GirlFriend from the Venture Brothers cartoon. I had a blast! He was the only one among thousands of goers who was fully fursuited, in his punk-rat suit, and much to my delight and laughter he got a lot of people asking if he was Chuck-E-Cheese (more like Chuck-E-Cheese’s evil twin).

One thing that stands out in my mind is when we both went to the bathroom, he was taking a whiz and someone told him, while he was in suit, “Nu-uh, we aren’t doing this in here”. Hahaha. Such a stigma with fursuits.

Another person said and pointed, “oh hell no!” , to which I quickly took out my laser gun from my garter belt and blasted him away. Other then those two haters, the festival was SUPER receptive to the giant furry rat. Multiple people came up and said they were furry too! There were even several people who recognized Patch from his blog (jeez, soooo popular… what? ever!) I’m not gonna lie, I spend hours upon hours on my costume and he still got more requests then me for pictures (jealous, not jealous).

The highlight of MY night was when someone had asked me where I bought my hat? Biiiiiitch – I made it!!  And that is one of the things I love about the furry community, that people put so much time and effort into their fursona/costume/cosplay/outfit/whatever you call it, that it is truly a work of art.

I loved dancing to music and getting to see a few of the creators of my favorite animations, like Dethklok/Metalocalypse, the new season premiere of Rick and Morty, and some Squidbillies live in action. Overall, it was a total success and we even got a picture together on the official Adult Swim twitter feed!

Read the rest of this entry »

A furry pilgrimage to the Adult Swim Festival and the Prancing Skiltaire house, Part 1.

by Patch O'Furr

Part 1Part 2Part 3

If you could do a furry travel tour, where would you go? Try some big conventions and mainstream destinations like Disneyland or the Mascot Hall of Fame, and some special stops that a non-furry wouldn’t think of. California has ones like the Prancing Skiltaire house, a shrine to cartoon animal art made by the founders of the first furry con, who open their house to fans by the hundreds.

A travel story wasn’t my plan when I got an invite from… let’s call them “Dr. Girlfriend”, to go to the Adult Swim Festival in Los Angeles on November 15-16, 2019. The opportunity just fell on me, so I made it a casual mini-tour including a stop nearby in Garden Grove, CA to visit the Skiltaire friends.

Dr. Girlfriend had tickets to the second live festival for Adult Swim, a now almost 2-decades old TV programming block for absurdist comedy and alternative animation. Cartoon Network hosts it at night while young audiences sleep, unless naughty kids are sneaking it (like I used to do for MTV Liquid Television). The leading show is Rick and Morty and it rarely has anything furry. But the show creators definitely know about us, and festival goers gave fist-bumps to a 6-foot rat scurrying among them. As “Patch Packrat” (I’m usually a husky dog) I was the only fursuiter in sight at the 22,000 capacity Banc of California Stadium.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Alpha Chow:” Adult Swim’s furry parody infomercial, and comments from the fursuit actor.

by Patch O'Furr

Arrow is the furry star of this!  I got in touch with him for some casual questions:

“How did the video come about? Did you answer a casting call or did they contact you? Didn’t the suit already exist… do you think they specifically wrote it to fit you? Did you talk about the story to the writer? What was the production like, and where? How many takes did you do for the demonic voice?”

He answered with a blog post about the video:

Arrow Discusses: The Adult Swim Experience.

…a writer from a company that films shorts for Adult Swim contacted me because he wrote a script involving a buff mascot costume. He apparently found me from a fursuit parade video. After reading the script, I agreed, and flew down for a day-shoot. It was an amazing experience – I was treated as “talent” as much as any of the other actors in the short, and everyone was friendly and fun.

Then Arrow added answers to my questions that weren’t already on the blog:

  • “The script he wrote called for a muscular dog costume. They figured instead of making their own they’d hire someone who already had one. He told me they emailed a few other furries too.
  • The production space they rented, hilariously, is Lance Ikegawa’s studio in LA.
  • When it was time to shoot the scene they didn’t know if I was going to voice it, so I jumped in and said I could do a pseudo-demonic voice and showed it to them. They did two takes. Obviously it was further edited in post. I did more takes of the head reveal, which was the most “acting” I did – I had to hold my own fursuit head in front of my face to cover my head entirely, then act like I was trying to pull the head off. That took about 5-10 takes.
  • The eyes are digital because I refused to wear contacts cause I can’t get them in my eyes – if I could wear contacts, I wouldn’t have gotten LASIK!”

Find Arrow on Twitter: @arrowt.

Fangcon’s Draconis in hospital, Claw & Quill, Watership Down – furry Newsdump (11/18/14)

by Patch O'Furr

Here’s links, headlines and little bites of news to make your tail wag.  Story tips are always welcome.

________________________________

Around Furry Fandom

________________________________

Fangcon’s Draconis / Calamity Cougar recovering from heart attack suffered shortly after the con.

Shortly before Fangcon, Draconis submitted a tip for my article about it.  It was a shock to hear bad news in short order.  I’m happy to see his positive video response about recovering, performing like a pro and furry all the way.

Claw and Quill: regrouping.

Watts (Chipotle’s) online publication attracted much anticipation from readers seeking smart furry magazine content, but it hasn’t put much material out.  The “long-overdue” second magazine issue has been conspicuously absent.  Now comes good news – a recent update from Watts explains a change from webzine format to WordPress, allowing multiple contributors to add content.  (I’d sure love to see more than the handful of blogs like this.)

Read the rest of this entry »