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Tag: ursa major awards

January 27, 2021

The Ursa Major Awards and 3rd annual Good Furry Award are open for nominations

by Patch O'Furr

DUTY CALLS FOR THE FANDOM! The Ursa Major awards are coming. Every year, furry creators (and mainstream creations) are up for nominations. For 2020’s movies, art, books, news magazines, and more… which ones will the community choose as favorites?

Nominate HERE for the Ursas, but don’t wait until it’s too late! February 13 is the deadline.

Furry ancestors spent ages of building temples for these works (well, there’s a website at least). Please support those who you want recognized with pets and praises.

Since 2001, these awards have been run with long hours of work by volunteers. They would appreciate any support you can give to defray costs for a website, making and mailing awards, and more.

The Awards committee could use help! Want to be on it? Leave a comment to be contacted. 

Categories:

  • Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture
  • Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Short Work
  • Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Series
  • Best Anthropomorphic Novel
  • Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction
  • Best Anthropomorphic Other Literary Work
  • Best Anthropomorphic Non-Fiction Work
  • Best Anthropomorphic Graphic Story
  • Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip
  • Best Anthropomorphic Magazine
  • Best Anthropomorphic Published Illustration
  • Best Anthropomorphic Game
  • Best Anthropomorphic Website
  • Best Anthropomorphic Costume (Fursuit)

2021 GOOD FURRY AWARD – Nominate furries HERE.

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December 14, 2020

2020 update for the Ursa Major Awards and The Good Furry Award for Ash Coyote

by Patch O'Furr

Something cool just came in the mail. It’s better than a Christmas present. It’s the Ursa Major Award for the year’s best anthropomorphic magazine!

The Ursa Major Awards are for public voting for the best furry movies, books, comics, art and more from the previous year. If you know of good 2020 works to share, the Recommended Anthropomorphics List is open NOW. Tell them what you love: recommended@ursamajorawards.org. Check out the list if you’re looking for good stuff to watch and read. Nominations for the next awards will start later in January 2021.

The most recent winners were decided a while ago, but it took time for everyone to get awards in the mail just recently. The awards depend on volunteer work by Rod O’Riley, the co-founder of ConFurence (with Mark Merlino). Rod and Mark run the Prancing Skiltaire house in Southern California and have been together for 40 years.

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March 6, 2020

VOTE! For the Ursa Major Awards for best furry works of 2019.

by Patch O'Furr

Have you heard? Rumors are flying around about some kind of contest for votes in the USA. It has a Birdie and a Bi-Den. That sounds furry, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s for the Ursa Major awards for the year’s best in furry movies, art, books, news magazines, and more.

You can vote HERE during all of March 2020, but don’t wait until it’s too late! VOTE NOW! 

Non-fiction and fursuits aren’t up for awards due to not enough nominations. (You CAN still nominate for the Good Furry Award.) Remember, armies of furry soldiers fought for your freedom to vote without getting told “yiff in hell”. So please do support those who are nominated, whether it’s for art, fiction or news from some fabulously erudite news hound!

Since 2001, these awards have been run with long hours of work by volunteers. They would appreciate any support you can give to defray costs for a website, making and mailing awards, and more.

NOMINEES FOR BEST OF 2019

Best Motion Picture
Live-action or animated feature-length movies.

• Avengers: Endgame (Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo; April 26)
• Frozen 2 (Directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck; November 22)
• Pokémon Detective Pikachu (Directed by Rob Letterman; May 3)
• Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling (Directed by Joe Murray and Cosmo Serguson; August 9)
• Toy Story 4 (Directed by Josh Cooley; June 21)

Best Dramatic Series or Short Work
TV series or one-shots, advertisements or short videos.

• Aggretsuko, Season 2 (Directed by Rarecho)
• Amphibia (Directed by Bert Youn and Derek Kirk Kim)
• Beastars (Directed by Shinichi Matsumi) Episode 1, October 8, 2019 (Japan)
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart (Written and Storyboarded by Phil Ahn, Allison Craig, Nathanael H. Jones, Griffith Kimmins, Alexandria Kwan, Nora Meek, Michael Moloney, Emily Oetzell, Parker Simmons, and Chris Ybarra)
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Season 9 (Directed by Denny Lu, Mike Myhre, and Gillian Comerford)

Best Novel
Written works of 40,000 words or more. Serialized novels qualify only for the year that the final chapter is published.

• Darwin-sensei, Kemono Musume-tachi ga Gakuen de Omochi desu!, by Daisaburo Nonoue
• Fair Trade, by Gre7g Luterman
• Nexus Nine, by Mary E. Lowd
• Off The Mark, by Bernard Doove and Jeff Hartt
• Red Skies, by GS Cole and NC Shapero

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February 3, 2020

Nominations now open for the 2019 Ursa Major Awards!

by Patch O'Furr

Sent in by a host of the Ursa Major awards, and co-founder of the first furry convention and oldest fan house in Southern California (the Prancing Skiltaire):

It’s that time of year again! The Furry community will honor the best of Anthropomorphic animation, art and literature, and everyone is invited to help choose the best for 2019! You make the nominations, and vote for the winners. Nominations are now open, until February 15, 2020. There is even a recommended list to help you make your choices, but you may submit anything your feel deserves the award. To nominate in any or all categories, go to https://ursamajorawards.org

Sylys Sable

Nominations for the 2019 Awards are now open and will close at midnight on February 15th, 2020.

To nominate online, go ENROLL FOR ONLINE NOMINATIONS or LOGIN if you have already enrolled.
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March 4, 2019

Vote for the 2018 Ursa Major Awards to support the best works of furry fandom.

by Patch O'Furr

Go here to vote for the 2018 Ursa Major Awards. The deadline is March 31.

Before nominees were chosen, the 2018 Recommended Anthropomorphics List made a much longer collection of suggested works. It’s useful as a guide for those looking for new furry stuff (and those interested in the recently added fursuit category may want to see the special requirements there.)

Please share this announcement, and help raise attention for the furry fandom equivalent of the Hugo awards for science fiction. They’re chosen by fans, not committee. Volunteers do the hard work of publicizing, organizing, counting votes, and mailing out engraved awards. These volunteers are the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association (ALAA), a membership organization dedicated to promoting works that furries love. They welcome suggestions for how to expand this effort.

The ALAA is supported by donations via PayPal (paypal@ursamajorawards.org) with 100% of the money going towards cost of the awards. Please consider donating.

The ALAA has done this for many years with only very modest help, and previously had stories here about lacking resources. One of the founders, Fred Patten, has recently passed away. In March 2018, member Bernard Doove commented:

The ALAA has needed volunteers for years, but we have lost members rather than gained, and we are all doing as much as possible to keep the Ursa Major Awards running. I’ll be donating money from my personal funds once again for the 2017 Award trophies, and I will be flying up to Queensland where the awards ceremony will be held at FurDU this year in order to run the event. The cost of that comes out of my own pocket too. I’m willing to do my bit for the cause, but we desperately need more people with the skills required to improve it.

Check out the UMA tag to learn more about them. Here’s the nominees for 13 categories. Winners will be announced on May 23–26 at AnthrOhio 2019.

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May 28, 2018

Discover the best of furry fandom with the 2017 Ursa Major awards, and 2017 Cóyotl Awards.

by Patch O'Furr

Thank you for helping Dogpatch Press to win the Ursa Major Award for Best Magazine of 2017!

 

Ever have a hard time knowing where to start with furry media? Does the horizon get lost in the digital sands?

Look no further than the Ursa Major Awards.  That’s the Furry equivalent of science fiction fandom’s Hugo Awards, mystery fandom’s Anthony Awards, or horror fandom’s Bram Stoker Awards. The Hugos also have the Nebulas to  complement them – and Furry has the Coyotl Awards for literature, as voted by the Furry Writers’ Guild. That’s not all – furry literature will also soon have the first Leo Awards, to be announced at AC 2018. (What’s the difference? The Leos are fandom-specific and voted on by a panel of judges.) The Ursa and Coyotl winners were both announced this month, so they’re all listed below to encourage you to check out some cool stuff you might not have seen.

URSA MAJOR NEWS

The winners for 2017 were announced at a presentation ceremony at the Furry Down-Under 2018 convention in Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland, Australia, on Saturday May 5.  FurDu posted a video of the ceremony including a slide show created by Ed Otter:

There was a lot of talk about it here before they were announced. Fred Patten saw growth in activities like fursuiting competing for attention with fan media, while maybe the awards could use a boost for reach after lower voting this year than in the past. A lack of staffing and funding led to appeals for help, while Anthrocon began offering matching donation to support writers. For 2019, the Awards will be presented at AnthrOhio.

Here’s a few things that stood out about the winners:

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April 19, 2018

Furry founder Fred Patten saw more partying, less fandom in 2018 with the Ursa Major Awards.

by Patch O'Furr

Fred Patten started off with a message to Patch O’Furr:

This is a rant, as much as anything.  I wrote, as Secretary of the ALAA (AKA the Ursa Major Awards) to the AnthrOhio Committee, to invite it to host next year’s award presentation ceremony.  AnthrOhio is the new name of former Morphicon in Columbus, Ohio. They presented the Ursa Majors in 2008, 2011, and 2015.

I got a very nice reply from Danny Travis, this year’s Director of Programming for AnthrOhio.  He thinks it’s a great idea and has agreed.  But his reply implies that he’s never heard of the Ursa Major Awards, and that he was unaware that they have been presented at Morphicon/AnthrOhio in the past.

This makes me wonder how many of today’s furry conventions are being organized by people who are mainly interested in putting on a big party with fursuits, and little interest or knowledge in furry fandom beyond their own convention, including their own con’s history.  Some like Anthrocon with Dr. Sam Conway and CaliFur with Rod O’Riley (and any con with staffers who have been around for a while) know what’s going on. But how many are being organized by young people who only use the trappings of furry fandom to have a good time?

You have been following not only the conventions but a lot of the smaller furry parties and raves.  Do you get the impression that most attendees are more interested in partying then other active fandom?

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March 16, 2018

Ursa Major Awards get matching donations from Anthrocon, help wanted from other cons.

by Patch O'Furr

For 15 years, the Ursa Major Awards lacked resources. Costs came from organizer pockets.  This year they tried a GoFundMe, and it’s getting close to the goal!

Here’s some good news courtesy of Fred Patten.

At a recent Anthrocon Board of Directors meeting, it was approved for Anthrocon to match up to $350 in donations received in the UMA’s GoFundMe campaign to cover trophy manufacturing and costs.

The donation is viewed as a way to support writers. Many publishers release new works at Anthrocon, and the con has a substantial writing track which doesn’t cost much to run. Anthrocon spends a lot to support fursuiters (they can get special souvenir tags, for example), but the writing track has never asked for more.

During the discussion, it was noticed that the ALAA hasn’t gotten other cons to donate yet. It was suggested the ALAA use this opportunity to ask other cons to match a portion of GoFundMe donations too.

There was discussion of making Anthrocon’s donation regular annually – if other cons donate regularly Anthrocon is likely to join in, probably matching their amounts. Now is the time to step up and help.

AnthrOhio has agreed to host the 2019 UMA presentations, and Biggest Little Fur Con the 2020 presentations.

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

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March 2, 2018

VOTE NOW for the 2017 Ursa Major Awards – voting closes on March 31.

by Patch O'Furr

Hey furries! The Ursa Major Awards for the best anthropomorphic media of 2017 are now open for voting. Go vote between March 1st – March 31st on the UMA website:  http://www.ursamajorawards.org

Can you imagine running these fandom awards for 15 years and not having enough help? I recently covered the story of financial difficulty and understaffing. Rod O’Riley, a key member of the award committee, is a fandom founder who organized the first furry parties and conventions in the 1980’s. He’s been covering costs out of his pocket for 15 years. There’s now an Ursa Major Awards GoFundMe taking donations to cover the costs of running it. Because I don’t just bark about critical stuff, I’m going to contribute $100. Can you give some too?

Before we get to the nominees, here’s some special notices. For Best Dramatic Series or Short Work of 2017, check out OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes. This Cartoon Network show got a lot of fandom notice for their episode “We’ve Got Fleas”. It makes a suspiciously cute callout to things we love. Wait for this: an interview with a writer/storyboard artist for OK K.O. is publishing soon on this site and it’s a fandom connection you’ll love.

The banner up top is special art we had made by Mexican furry artist Meteor-05 to give you a suggestion for Best Magazine. And Dogpatch Press isn’t even the only nominee from the culprits who make it happen. Best Other Literary Work has two from Fred Patten. Best Non-Fiction Work has an essay by me in Furries Among Us 2. There’s also Fred’s Furry Fandom Conventions, 1989-2015 … but nobody should worry if your first pick is Furry Nation by Joe Strike, the first formally published fandom history, many years in the making. How did this category get so tough for picking just one?

Here’s the Final Ballot. Winners will be announced at a presentation ceremony at FurDU 2018 at Gold Coast City, Queensland, Australia on May 4-6, 2018.

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February 23, 2018

The Ursa Major Awards are a fandom institution, but can we fund them?

by Patch O'Furr

Co-written by Thurston Howl and Patch O’Furr. Full disclosure – Howl and Patch have received Ursa Major awards by community vote.

Even in non-writing communities in the furry fandom, many furries are aware of the Ursa Major Awards. They’ve been around for about 17 years, have presence at cons, and each year they receive many voters. However, for all their legacy, Thurston Howl – (a furry publisher who assisted with social media and marketing for the UMAs in 2017) – has come forward with concerns involving the UMAs’ recent soliciting for donations and GoFundMe campaign.

A transparency concern.

Until now, there has been no formal budget or accounting for funding. Fred Patten, Secretary of the ALAA (Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which runs the UMAs), told Howl on 5/30/17: “I cannot remember that the Treasurer for the ALAA has ever submitted a formal treasury report.” Fred confirmed there were no records for 17 years, and later added:

I don’t know how much it costs to print UMA award certificates, buy frames for them, ship them to the recipients, make and ship powerpoint presentations, etc., and I don’t know how much total in donations we’ve gotten over the years…

There have been complaints in email discussion by associates.  ALAA member Bernard Doove said: “I would like a report on the finances that is more than ‘we’re broke.'” And on 5/4/17, a donor reported that they considered their donation “an unwise decision that could have been put to much better use elsewhere.” There were even fears of misappropriation, but Bernard Doove found no evidence when he looked in the bank accounts. The explanation seems to be fees of $156/year to maintain a Checking and Savings account if they have under a $300 minimum balance each.

It honestly seems like an issue of mixing small fan efforts with more formal organization, like how fandom started. ALAA Treasurer Rod O’Riley was a fandom founder who helped start Confurence in 1989. He responded to a request for comment:

The problem is not transparency — the problem is a lack of funds to be transparent about.

All donations have made their way into our bank account, and have been spent on either what they were supposed to be spent on — making and mailing out our trophies and plaques — or else were swallowed by the bank fees. ALL donations. Sometimes they took a while to get where they were going — as recently, when PayPal and our bank’s on-line system had difficulties talking to each other, for reasons I still do not understand. But eventually, they got where there were going.

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