This is a link to a journal on DA that details what I've been observing over the last few months.

And this is a link to an FA forum thread where you can leave a comm- wait, nope! It's already been locked. Wonderful.

This journal complies fully with section 3.1 of the Code of Conduct. Also, if you're reading this Dragoneer, hello. Please unwatch me.

If you want to know why, you can read my journal on DA.

Update: As of the November 2022 update, these steps may no longer work because FA has rewritten the upload logic. Your pictures should no longer be scaled down to 1280 pixels automatically, but there is now a limit of 2K resolution for regular users and 4K for FA+ subscribers.


With so many artists joining FA each year, many of you may not know that the site automatically downscales anything you upload to 1280 pixels, which is pretty awful in the age of 4K screens. However, there is an old workaround that's been around for years...

Step 1: Upload your artwork as normal. It'll be downscaled to 1280 pixels.

Step 2: Once the submission is live, look for the "Update Source File" link near the "Edit Submission Info" link.

Step 3: Reupload the same file again and submit. Using this process, the image will NOT be downscaled.

You're welcome. :)

Also check out my guide for fixing downscaled images on DeviantArt if you use that site.

I signed up for Weasyl a few years back and uploaded a few old pieces, with the intention of adding the rest, but never bothered to finish.

Last time I looked at FurryNetwork, it was still in beta. It looked and felt like a horrible Facebook clone. Have things changed since then?

Who here uses these sites or have used them in the past? Any opinions you'd like to share?

Do you remember this journal from February 2018?

FA Classifies Naturism as Sexual Content & Suspends Samareck
Update on FA's AUP for Naturism and Minors

Well, guess what?  samareck has been suspended again (screenshot), and has lost his appeal (screenshot).

Dragoneer saw the previous journal and personally promised to look into this, as well as talk to IMVU about adjusting the policy (check the comments). But now we're back where we started, only this time Sam is on a final warning before being banned. This is not only distressing for him and his followers, but a personal insult to me. I sent Dragoneer a note about this 3 days ago and it's been read, but not answered, so I have to post this with the assumption that it's going to take a while longer, if I get anything at all.

There are several issues here. As we know, one of them is the AUP itself. Drawings of any naked humanoid creature that's under the age of 18 is a violation, unless it's a "non-sexual depiction of birth or breastfeeding" if that makes any sense at all. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm sure IMVU has some... and yet we haven't heard anything from them yet. The second issue is the lack of accountability for the follow-up appeal. Notice how the email says "I" but has not been signed off with anyone's name or username. If this "I" is the same person who processed the original suspension, then this appeal is meaningless! FYI, FA's past history with moderation and staff management was partly responsible for the creation of Weasyl's Staff Code of Conduct.

I'm seriously wondering if they're hoping that this issue will just 'blow over' once more and they don't have to commit to any reviews or policy adjustments. Nobody wants to rock the boat, right?

So where does this leave us now? Samareck is probably going to stop submitting anything to FA entirely. He'll still be on Twitter, Inkbunny and DeviantArt (Yes! Even DA's policies seem to be okay with his art!)

If this issue still cannot be resolved then I will consider stopping uploads to FA, or I will only upload thumbnails. No, this policy doesn't affect my work, but it's a matter of principle. It's a real shame, but my faith in this platform is even lower than it was a year ago. In summary, this is why we cannot have nice things.


PS. Here's a funny observation. If you draw a breastfeeding child somewhere in your picture, it would be technically compliant with FA's AUP.

I figured I'd finish off the year by picking out a few favourite fursuiting tweets.
However, FA still doesn't have the ability to put images in journals (despite support for YouTube videos), so please go to DA to view it!

https://www.deviantart.com/restrain.....p-Up-779110286

Enjoy, and hope you have a happy 2019!

I realise I haven't posted any official journal updates since Further Confusion in January. Since then, I've been to BLFC, Confuzzled and Anthrocon, and I'll do my best to write up a little summary about that in a few weeks!

In the meantime, Eurofurence 2018 is in just a couple of days and I'm stoked for it! I'll be touching down on Wednesday afternoon.

Like BLFC, this is a new one for me and the there will be a whole new crowd of non-US furries there. If you're going then feel free to poke me on Twitter, Telegram, etc. I'm very approachable and I'd like to find some friends to hang out with!

Hey scalies! It's been over a month since Further Confusion ended, and I have been too lazy to write anything about it until now.

As you may have seen from my tweets at MFF2017, I have 'acquired' some kind of raptor visage, made by the talented Beta Raptor Creations. With a whole 3 days to play around with it at FC, I was sure not to waste any time! Here are some links to the relevant tweets. Since FA is crap and cannot put images in journals, you'll have to click to see them, or you can go to my DeviantArt journal instead.

Me messing around with Renn's steadycam (video)
Me and Niko causing mischief at Bree's paleo panel
Thorphax shows the raptor who's the boss!
Thorphax drags me into a photoshoot. Help!

I want to thank Solace and Drakeor for hosting me in their hotel room, since I was originally planning to skip FC due to it being so close to MFF. I'm glad I didn't! Niko Raptor was a bunch of fun too, on the convention floor and at the panel.

And of course, I want to thank Thorphax for the wonderful ropework and putting me through my paces out in public. This was something I've always fantasized about and I wasn't expecting it to happen so soon! Rest assured there will be payback time at BLFC. >:3

Hey scalie lovers! Once again, I'm not posting enough journals and I'm leaving this to the last minute, but I thought you should get an update.

I managed to get a last-minute invite to Midwest Furfest only one month ago. I knew it was always a popular con, but I didn't imagine it outnumbering the attendance of Anthrocon. Crazy! It's also where I ran into this...

https://twitter.com/beta_Raptor/sta.....78657847357441

I've been avoiding the thought of fursuits for a long time, because of several reasons... Intolerance of high temperatures, social skills, maintenance, etc. But I couldn't stop thinking about this one when I saw it on sale at Beta Raptor Creations' table. So...

https://twitter.com/RestrainedRaptr.....60164210380801

Previously I've tried a friend's dragon fursuit on (with a cool-vest) and I've also become Raptor Jesus for a bit thanks to Scotty the Minotaur. It was fun getting back into the swing of things with this fellow, and I'm delighted to be heading off to Further Confusion tomorrow to do it all again! This time I'll have 3 days instead of 1 evening, so the possibilities are endless. ^..^

Reply here if you're going to be there! If you want to keep track of my whereabouts at the con, I'm going to try a new experimental method via Telegram. At previous cons, I've found keeping in touch with, and sharing media with dozens of people is really difficult. What I intend to do is set up a group that people can join if they want to follow or arrange groups with me. If you want to me in it, leave your Telegram name here or in a PM.

I'd also like to share this latest joint commission with you today. Oh my goodness - Sigma is a dom for once! :D All the characters featured in this piece are in the description.

Here's the link, because FA is still too primitive to support pictures in journals!

Hey scalie fans! Long time, no journal.

Just letting you all know that I'll be heading off to AnthroCon again this year, from 29th June to 4th July. If you want to meet up and say hi, then leave a comment!

With luck, I'll be arranging some pool parties at the DoubleTree hotel, so if you want to be a part of that, let me know too! We have a Telegram group.

If you didn't see the previous journal, please read: FA Classifies Naturism as Sexual Content & Suspends Samareck

Today, FA's AUP was updated, and some of the rules concerning minors were updated. However, I don't believe it's going to be enough to safeguard the aforementioned works.

I have addressed my new concerns with this comment: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal...../#cid:52396511 We're still keeping an eye on this!

Further update: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/8153496/


This has become a real ugly discussion in the Furry Naturists chat tonight. A lot of you may know  samareck for his cheerful and family-friendly anthro art with a focus on naturism and freedom to express yourself, no matter what you are.

Today, his account was suspended for 3 days because of a supposed violation of the Acceptable Upload Policy (AUP). Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/1ZbLVdM.jpg

"Acceptable Upload Policy: Section 2.12 - Content featuring minors is prohibited when nudity or sexual activity is present. Minors are real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals."

Here is the submission in question: http://samareck.deviantart.com/art/.....mily-654686511

While the violation of policy itself could be classified as technically correct, FA's own AUP is at fault here. What this basically amounts to is: any kind of young furry character, not wearing clothes, is instant grounds for a suspension or ban. It implies the naturism, nudism or or just being naked is equivalent to 'sexual content' which we all know NOT to be true! The difference is clear by the context of the scene. This is clearly not 'cub smut' or anywhere near it. The issue isn't with US law either, since sites like InkBunny allow all kinds of nasty things in that respect.

Oh, and did you notice the part about "any adolescent animals"? That technically means if you draw a picture of a puppy, you would fall foul of this rule too, unless you put a pair of pants on it!

We don't know who reported the image, but they are, to pardon my French, a fucking coward. They'd probably try and take down all the cherub sculptures in Italy too under the same argument!

If you want to find him on other websites for the time being, he's on InkBunny, DeviantArt, Tumblr. As John Gilmore would say, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

In addition, remember that FA has a terrible history for policing users and submissions, as well as security, which is why everyone here should have at least one other account on another website such as DeviantArt, Weasyl and so on. There are tools to help you migrate while keeping in touch with friends, such as the Exodus Helper. Furry Network even has an automated tool to pull all your submissions over.

If you support him, reply here or repost in your own journal. If you know of an effective way to debate the AUP and get staff to listen or explain themselves, please also tell us. If you have questions or points to make about the intent of the AUP or US law regarding pictures of minors, then please feel free to discuss that too, especially if you know how sites like IB manage to skirt around the issue entirely.

I'm not one for writing up huge logs of everything I do on my vacations, so instead, I'll link you to Samareck's FC journal here.

I also urge you to check out his artwork he did for us three! Send that shark guy some love. <3

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/22388939/

Need more social media of the scaly variety? Got Twitter? Well, perhaps follow me! I pledge to post and retweet only the cutest reptiles and the most entertaining things I see each day. No drama and no politics, guaranteed.

https://twitter.com/RestrainedRaptr

Yes, you read that right. The 'geniuses' at Twitter decided that a username can only be up to 15 characters long, and since mine is 16, a letter had to get chopped off somewhere. (Slow clap) Thanks guys.

Part 1 | Part 2

This is getting rather annoying.

https://www.f-list.net/c/sigma%20utahraptor (Screenshot)

The above F-List character is NOT me. My profile can be found at https://www.f-list.net/c/sigma%20sapien/

If you see any other characters on this person's profiles that you recognize as a friend of yours, you might want to let them know too.

Please do not harass them. I am providing this info as evidence only, and may take it down if he is reasonable and ceases to impersonate me. I am making an effort to contact them about it, and if that fails, I shall send a report to the F-List staff. My character is verified because of previous issues, so it's just a matter of time, whatever they do.

Thank you to Seraphis who discovered this and brought it to my attention. Us scalies need to stick together and help each other.

Edit: Thankfully, the user decided to heed my advice and deleted the character without any need to report him. However, I also found out that another person had also tried to impersonate my raptor at some point, but has since been banned. Wow... Does this ever end? Probably not.

If you'll be there and you're not square, then make sure you leave a reply below!

┗(＾0＾)┓ ヾ(･ω･*)ﾉ °\(^▿^)/°

Oh, also... Does anyone have an official Telegram group chat invite for AnthroCon? Is there even one? I couldn't find any on the website.

I'm sure you're all aware of the IM platform Telegram by now. Some describe it as the 'Skype killer' and it seems to be pretty popular amongst furries. Having seen many people using it at furry conventions to communicate, I thought I'd finally give it a try and see what all the fuss is about.

The first obstacle with Telegram is the most annoying one, and immediately makes me question whether it's going to be a viable alternative to Skype for many people. Telegram forces you to register with a mobile phone number. You simply cannot join without one. This is what made me dismiss it completely at first, but I eventually got myself a new £10 SIM card and basic phone to use with it, in order to avoid leaking my real phone number (some furries like privacy, you know!) You can set an authentication password and a recovery email for your account, but that's just a backup. You always have to get an authentication code delivered to your phone to log in. Why do they force people to do this, and not just allow registration with an email/password like every other platform that ever existed? I don't know, and I don't like it.

After that, the next most stupid omission from the Telegram feature list is plainly visible. It has no friends list. Yes, you heard me right. No way to save contacts. If you have friends' numbers saved in your phonebook and you're using the app, then it integrates with that, but if you're using the PC/web client then of course there's no phone book. And, of course, most people will not have each other's numbers anyway, so the whole thing breaks down. The only way to keep people easily accessible is to NEVER close your conversation with them. For people like me, who want to close old conversations to keep their screen nice and tidy, this is absolutely awful. Even Discord, which has only been around for half the time and is primarily focused on gaming clans, has recently introduced a full friends list and PM feature.

Next on my list of annoyances is the status system. There are none! Yep, they couldn't even be bothered with that either. The only status is 'online' and that status only works when your contact actually has the app in the foreground. If it's running in the background, the online indicator disappears immediately, effectively rendering them as offline. You can check when a contact was 'last seen' but since there's no way to sort your conversations list (not a friends list, remember?) by status or last-seen time, this is practically useless, and I would basically need to manually scan through every single conversation to get an idea of who is (potentially) online before talking to them. Seriously, guys? As an aside, Microsoft has been doing a great job of screwing up Skype statuses on tablets and mobiles, but that's another story.

Finally, stickers. The one thing that makes Telegram sort-of special. They're basically images that you can throw into a conversation to spice things up. Once you see one, you can click it to see the full set, add it to your own sticker collection, and share with others. However, there's no way to browse or search sticker collections on Telegram! That means you either have to make your own, or ask your friends to throw a bunch of sticker links at you. Alternatively, you can use a bunch of third-party websites that people have made to work around the issue. You'd think they would make a bigger deal about their one 'killer feature'.

So, let's compare some more features. Let me know if I've missed something!

(The below table is horribly formatted because FA doesn't support tables or even code blocks. Lame.)

Feature ................................ Skype Discord Steam Telegram
Sign up using email ............ Yes ... Yes ..... Yes .... No
Friends list ...........................Yes ... Yes ...... Yes .... No
Statuses ...............................Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... No
Group chats ........................ Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... Yes
Voice chat ........................... Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... No
Inline images/links ............. No .... Yes ..... No ..... Yes
Emoji ................................... No .... Yes ..... No ..... Yes
Custom emotes/stickers .... No .... No ...... Some . Yes
Mobile apps ....................... Yes .... Yes ..... Yes .... Yes

From what I've tested so far, I don't understand why this particular new-and-shiny product is getting all the attention. I have many more gripes about it, but that would double the length of this journal, so the TL;DR of it is: Telegram is a poor-man's attempt at instant messaging, and Telegram for PC is like a poorly made console port of a game to PC.

What do you guys think? Which platforms do you prefer?

Part 1

Those of you who have been watching me for a long time might remember the time when someone tried to use my ref sheet to commission a fursuit for themselves.

Well, it keeps getting better.



Some idiot stole my ref sheet to use as their YouTube display picture, and then ended up getting their comment featured in the latest Honest Game Trailers video for XCOM! It appears 3 seconds in.

I'm just glad he didn't steal my name too, and end up making me look like a complete fool. Sadly, I've been unable to find this guy 'Ryujin the Utahraptor' anywhere in the Internet. He may have changed his identity since the screenshot was taken. If you spot him, please let me know so I can have a polite word with him... Yeah.

The above link to the video is also a link to the comment I left on the video, so please upvote it to get the message across!

Thanks to SkyboxMonster for bringing this to my attention.

Update: I've found his Google+ profile now. I've sent him a message and hope he'll do the right thing.
Final update: They never responded, and the account appears to be abandoned. Of course, Google won't do anything about it because neither of us are using our real identities. Therefore, I'm just going to let it be.

2015 had a lot of ups and downs for me. I tried a lot of new things, but by the end of it, I was still depressed and generally unwilling to contribute to society. I didn't submit any artwork at all in 2015.

Well, I'm hoping to turn that around this year. I'm off to Further Confusion in California in a few days, but I shall submit a few things for your entertainment before I go. I'm not really in the mood to attempt proper drawing yet, but I have a backlog of lovely Second Life photography I'd like to share with you all. I hope there are a few of you still left out there to appreciate them!

This is an interesting test and I've seen a few people doing it here, so I've done it too. You can take it too at bdsmtest.org.

My results...

89% Bondage Giver
89% Bondage Receiver
89% Switch
80% Experimentalist
73% Non-monogamist
66% Submissive
65% Brat
63% Primal (Predator)
63% Primal (Prey)
54% Girl/Boy
52% Brat Tamer
49% Voyeur
46% Dominant
46% Vanilla
41% Daddy/Mommy
41% Degradation Receiver
34% Degradation Giver
31% Pervert
29% Exhibitionist
24% Slave
19% All-Rounder
9% Master/Mistress
8% Masochist
8% Sadist

See my results page to get definitions for all those terms.

Hey scalies,

Another new year, and another convention! :) I'm sticking around in Downtown San Jose with  Deiwea for a week this time so we'll have a chance to venture outside of the convention zone.

I've just been looking at the Wiki page for List of attractions in Silicon Valley so far. I'll probably want to check out the tech stuff first.

If you've been around the area before, please offer your own recommendations. And if you're coming to FC, then leave a comment!

I was contacted on FA recently by an artist and fursuit maker, to let me know that someone had tried to commission a fursuit from them, using Sigma's ref sheet as their own. Thank goodness they did their due diligence and searched for the source first.

Facebook conversation between artist and the art thief

What can I say... I'm just really glad it got caught here, before I actually ended up bumping into it at a furcon.

Wouldn't it be awesome if I got this person to pay for the suit, but it got made to fit me, and delivered to me? That would be a valuable and expensive lesson to teach an art thief. I wonder what they would even DO... given that they can barely even type.

I'm not going to mention or criticize the way that FA is run or the decisions made by the administrators of the site. I'm sure you are all aware of how bad that's been lately. And if you don't know, just look at Fender's journal history.

I'm talking specifically about how 3D renders and screenshots are handled in the new AUP. This new AUP, updated last year, supposedly makes things shorter and easier to read, but unfortunately, it is very vague in several areas, and a lot of people disagree with the spirit of the rules there too. Basically, according to the AUP, if you didn't create EVERYTHING in the picture yourself from scratch, you might be in violation. That includes models and assets that you have bought and therefore have the right to use in creative works. Clearly that's not helpful. Some of you might have read the arguments on the FA forums regarding this matter.

This has held me back from uploading some of my favourite SL pictures, but I've decided I'm going to upload some anyway and hope that common sense prevails. I wouldn't be uploading something if I thought it was anything less than excellent, so don't worry about screenshot spam.

Wish me luck! And please share your opinions too.

RR.

Sold out!

Donate $35 or more to adopt one! ^..^
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