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Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: students

January 15, 2020

SCADfurs: These furry animation students will make shows you love one day

by Patch O'Furr

Continuing from Furry college clubs — a place for artists and animators with dreams and fears.

Fall Fest 2019

Yesterday’s article looked at college clubs for furries being a new movement in a growing fandom. It covered clubs at art and animation schools being a special place for people who haven’t always been in synch with the mainstream. It could involve stigma with jobs, but the upside is pro artists making good ties to fandom, and indie artists finding opportunity.

Georgia’s Savannah College of Art and Design is a top rated school near Furry Weekend Atlanta, and a place to find furry talent. SCADfurs is a club for them you can see on Furaffinity or Twitter. SCAD furs president Bucky is a Sequential Art major, and here’s our Q&A.

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January 14, 2020

Furry college clubs — a place for artists and animators with vivid dreams and fears

by Patch O'Furr

A staple comic, 1998-2000

Furry College Clubs are a new movement

Furscience, the group researching furry fandom data, say the majority of members are around college age. By law, they can only track ages 18+, so this growing subculture may have an army of new lurkers just finding their whiskers and tails.

Looking back, furries at colleges are nothing new (check big furry comics of the 90’s) — but having enough members at the same schools to start official clubs is a new chapter in fandom.

A 2005-era Livejournal-connected list has a few dozen college furries — in the world, not the same place. A 2008 forum topic mentions handfuls finding each other (but more likely at anime clubs.) Then during a watershed time of mainstream media turning from mockery to fascination with the fandom (between MFF 2014 and Zootopia), a USA Today headline says: Growing community of ‘furries’ finds acceptance on campus.

Student newspapers love the topic now. It’s a common reason for alerts about furries in the media. And in big online forums, college location lists get hundreds of responses. Looking into it gives an impression that many are majoring in tech, science, or arts. But one subject stands out the most.

Pro animator dreams

Furry fandom overflows with art talent. And the animation industry is a hoped-for destination for many. For a guiding light, they can look at artists like Joaquin Baldwin (Disney’s Zootopia) joining furries as a popular convention guest.

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October 21, 2019

Furry support: Good Furry Award open for nomination, MidAnthro launches scholarship.

by Patch O'Furr

In a group that loves supporting itself and its creators, funding is key. Some furry fandom activity can be a self-sustaining occupation, like creating art or fursuits. It can be nearly impossible for most fandom event organizing or writing. Corporate sponsorship is treated as toxic; crowdfunding is never a guarantee. It’s why things work the way they do, such as *ahem* the time-consuming work of news writing for nonprofit community benefit.

Awards that support furries who qualify are very rare. I’d seen flyers at cons for a furry writer’s residency program (although details aren’t turning up), and then there’s the Good Furry Award.

The Good Furry Award was established in 2018 by Grubbs Grizzly. It gives annual recognition to one winner for outstanding spirit in the furry community. The first one went to Tony “Dogbomb” Barrett. The winner gets a crystal trophy of recognition and check for $500 to use for anything they want. Grubbs says he made it because:

It seems to me that every time something negative happens in the fandom, people focus on that too much to the point of giving the entire fandom a bad reputation. Rather than paying attention to the few furries who cause trouble, I would like us all to focus on furries who do good things and are good people. Let’s give those furries some attention instead!

Nominations are open now. You can do it here: http://www.askpapabear.com/good-furry-award.html

The Cobalt The Fox Memorial Scholarship from Mid-Atlantic Anthropomorphic Association, Inc.

An annual $1000 educational scholarship is coming from The Mid-Atlantic Anthropomorphic Association, a Maryland nonprofit that organizes events like Fur the ‘More and Fur-b-Que. It honors Cobalt The Fox, their staffer who passed away in October 2017.

Who will it support? Details are pending for how to apply. Fur the ‘More’s chair Kit Drago told me: “it will likely be competitive. The application process is expected to have several criteria and questions as well as an essay.” (I wonder if the criteria could favor students in art or things like environmental/animal science, but wait for updates.)

The press release:

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