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Transfur's new application process
Posted 14 years agoIf you're familiar with a thing called transformation art, then you're probably familiar with Transfur and its reputation of turning away artists wanting to join its noble ranks. It's "quality controlled", and of course in order to do that you have an application process. Quality controlled galleries are not my cup of tea (which is why I'll always come to FA over other sites that cater to TF) but nevertheless I try to maintain a presence there, if only because I find the politics of it fascinating and I like to get involved to uh, protect my own interests, as it were. You know, keepin' it weird, keepin' it accessible to people at various levels in their artistic development, that sort of thing. Plus, the comments there are pretty brutally sincere, which I can appreciate, from time to time.
Anyway, Transfur's new application process involves a round of committee commenting by existing Transfur members, giving critique and such, before the head honcho makes the final decision. It's a democratic approach I have no qualms over! In fact, I'm not even going to say anything with regards to whether the new application process is good or bad, it's too new to make those kinds of proclamations. It's certainly a step in the right direction. Rather, I'd like to use the application process as a springboard to ask some questions!
The main question is... what makes a TF picture better than another one? If it's a subject matter we all want to get better at, what do we improve on that's specific to the genre? When we talk about individual artists, it's easy to talk about their line quality, anatomy, perspective, color harmony, the rendering of light and shadow, composition, contrast, action lines, all sorts of stuff that there's a correct way to approach if the end result is an image that reads as visually pleasant. If you can level up in all of these skills, you can be a good artist.
There are, however, a few more esoteric skills that are specific to TF art that never get discussed because it's very hard to advise people on them. Technical skill or style are ancillary to the development of a great and effective piece of transformation art. Transformation is never a neutral subject matter, as emotional transformations are at the core of any character-driven story. Physical transformations are just a metaphor, then, for whatever emotion you want to get across. Anger and rage turns into a bloody, painful werewolf TF. Whimsical goofiness is a 'toon TF. A desire to be cuddled is a plush TF. A desire to be frightened might turn you into something that you're afraid of. It's about an interior emotion being made visible through a literal physical change in someone's body, and naturally the dual identities of this transforming person are crucial to interpretation. Before you even put pencil to paper (so to speak), knowing what emotion draws you to wanting to draw their changing body will tell you exactly how to pose your characters, what expressions they should have on their faces, where they are in the world, what their hopes and dreams are, the ways in which their body is being changed, what they're being changed by, etc.
Then again, does introspection make for a better piece of TF art? Like, does the community we're all supposedly drawing for prefer the expressive quality of TF art over the technical skill of the artist? I have no idea. Based on the critiques I read on Transfur's various applications, a critique of an artist's ability to connect their emotional lives with the art they draw is far below improving anatomical rendering. Here we are, all gathered around a very specific genre, we all have a common interest, but we're just farting around on the shore.
What are the qualities that make a good piece of TF art? What should we be saying to point beginners in the direction that's most relevant to the genre?
Anyway, Transfur's new application process involves a round of committee commenting by existing Transfur members, giving critique and such, before the head honcho makes the final decision. It's a democratic approach I have no qualms over! In fact, I'm not even going to say anything with regards to whether the new application process is good or bad, it's too new to make those kinds of proclamations. It's certainly a step in the right direction. Rather, I'd like to use the application process as a springboard to ask some questions!
The main question is... what makes a TF picture better than another one? If it's a subject matter we all want to get better at, what do we improve on that's specific to the genre? When we talk about individual artists, it's easy to talk about their line quality, anatomy, perspective, color harmony, the rendering of light and shadow, composition, contrast, action lines, all sorts of stuff that there's a correct way to approach if the end result is an image that reads as visually pleasant. If you can level up in all of these skills, you can be a good artist.
There are, however, a few more esoteric skills that are specific to TF art that never get discussed because it's very hard to advise people on them. Technical skill or style are ancillary to the development of a great and effective piece of transformation art. Transformation is never a neutral subject matter, as emotional transformations are at the core of any character-driven story. Physical transformations are just a metaphor, then, for whatever emotion you want to get across. Anger and rage turns into a bloody, painful werewolf TF. Whimsical goofiness is a 'toon TF. A desire to be cuddled is a plush TF. A desire to be frightened might turn you into something that you're afraid of. It's about an interior emotion being made visible through a literal physical change in someone's body, and naturally the dual identities of this transforming person are crucial to interpretation. Before you even put pencil to paper (so to speak), knowing what emotion draws you to wanting to draw their changing body will tell you exactly how to pose your characters, what expressions they should have on their faces, where they are in the world, what their hopes and dreams are, the ways in which their body is being changed, what they're being changed by, etc.
Then again, does introspection make for a better piece of TF art? Like, does the community we're all supposedly drawing for prefer the expressive quality of TF art over the technical skill of the artist? I have no idea. Based on the critiques I read on Transfur's various applications, a critique of an artist's ability to connect their emotional lives with the art they draw is far below improving anatomical rendering. Here we are, all gathered around a very specific genre, we all have a common interest, but we're just farting around on the shore.
What are the qualities that make a good piece of TF art? What should we be saying to point beginners in the direction that's most relevant to the genre?
I'm baaaaack!
Posted 14 years agoI missed you all. That's all I gotta say. <3
Back in two weeks!
Posted 14 years agoHey everyone! I'm stealing some time on FA to say I miss you all and I'm coming back soon! Expect to see me perving out to the extreme sometime around the 19th or 20th.
The almost 2,000 submissions you will all have made will be waiting for me, and I can't wait to go through them all. ^^
I also have some things here with me that you will enjoy reading... including (soon to be) THREE costume TF related tales.
Anyway, that's all I have time to share right now, I can't wait to be home!
The almost 2,000 submissions you will all have made will be waiting for me, and I can't wait to go through them all. ^^
I also have some things here with me that you will enjoy reading... including (soon to be) THREE costume TF related tales.
Anyway, that's all I have time to share right now, I can't wait to be home!
Commissions suddenly and unexpectedly ON PAUSE for 2 months
Posted 14 years agoHey y'all! I know this is a lot to ask, but I've just accepted a job offer that will take me out of town and away from my computer for two months. I'm putting the commissions on pause for the duration. Basically this means that the current queue still stands when I get back (so if you've claimed a commission, it's guaranteed yours) but if you think you might not WANT Swatcher arts two months from now, I can take you off the list.
This is really unexpected, I wish I had been able to clear my plate before leaving but I didn't even know I would be leaving until today.
This means any other side projects are on pause as well (i.e. the podcasts).
Sorry, folks! I'll miss you all! I'm still reachable by e-mail.
This is really unexpected, I wish I had been able to clear my plate before leaving but I didn't even know I would be leaving until today.
This means any other side projects are on pause as well (i.e. the podcasts).
Sorry, folks! I'll miss you all! I'm still reachable by e-mail.
Orphaned stories and undeveloped ideas.
Posted 14 years agoEvery now and then I'll be lying in bed trying to sleep when an idea will strike me and I have to write it down. I've been keeping a list in Google Docs of hot scenarios that I'd like imaged or written about in some way. But most of the time it's just been sitting there, the ideas just a little bit too ambitious to realize, or too humiliating/stupid to set to paper. Try to guess which is which!
A spandex skin suit that can simulate body types via strategic inflation (fat, muscular, short, tall, masculine, feminine). Your body retains this new shape when the suit is removed. The use of belts, moulds, corsets, and other restraining devices can have very dramatic effects. They were originally developed for film and TV. These have been taken and hacked by an enterprising group of hacker/fetishists.
Two furs become trapped in a Thomas Kinkade painting. One becomes the sparkle-eyed owner of the cottage. The other becomes an animate snowman.
A self-insertion character gets turned into Shrek the ogre via being absorbed by a life-sized cardboard cutout in a movie store.
Advanced human civilization has some sort of whimsical TF technology, turns criminals into harmless monsters to be fought on a DnD style planet.
Monstrous tattoo artist wearing fetish gear tattoos a captive person to look like them. Self-portrait in flesh.
A group of devils torments a self-insertion character with a devil mask that will ultimately transform him into one of them by keeping it out of his reach and taunting him with letting him wear it if he does what they say.
Then there's the stories I HAVE started writing:
A man is forced to wear a lion mascot costume at a theme park, and turns a little more into the character every time he breaks character. Things don't go as planned.
Duke, the living werewolf costume, does something in his nature that he regrets.
A goblin, the mascot of an abandonware full-immersion VR simulation game, uses its last player, a pervert who plays only to fuck the NPCs, as a means of escaping into the real world.
A furry uses a magic, wish-granting e-mail to live out a convoluted commission between him and his mate.
An elderly gentleman receives a strange halloween mask from his father's old prop house, which is being dismantled and moved. He uses this mask's transformative powers to take down the mobsters shaking down his new business for protection money.
A college student with an overbearingly verbally abusive roommate pines over a cartoon character crush, only to have the character crush come to life on a VHS cassette.
A fox receives a mysterious package: a full-sized robotic reconstruction of himself, down to every inch of fur. His robot clone seems solely interested in engaging him in a romantic relationship, and soon the temptation is too much to bear.
Anyway, that's it! No idea what to do with any of these. ^^
A spandex skin suit that can simulate body types via strategic inflation (fat, muscular, short, tall, masculine, feminine). Your body retains this new shape when the suit is removed. The use of belts, moulds, corsets, and other restraining devices can have very dramatic effects. They were originally developed for film and TV. These have been taken and hacked by an enterprising group of hacker/fetishists.
Two furs become trapped in a Thomas Kinkade painting. One becomes the sparkle-eyed owner of the cottage. The other becomes an animate snowman.
A self-insertion character gets turned into Shrek the ogre via being absorbed by a life-sized cardboard cutout in a movie store.
Advanced human civilization has some sort of whimsical TF technology, turns criminals into harmless monsters to be fought on a DnD style planet.
Monstrous tattoo artist wearing fetish gear tattoos a captive person to look like them. Self-portrait in flesh.
A group of devils torments a self-insertion character with a devil mask that will ultimately transform him into one of them by keeping it out of his reach and taunting him with letting him wear it if he does what they say.
Then there's the stories I HAVE started writing:
A man is forced to wear a lion mascot costume at a theme park, and turns a little more into the character every time he breaks character. Things don't go as planned.
Duke, the living werewolf costume, does something in his nature that he regrets.
A goblin, the mascot of an abandonware full-immersion VR simulation game, uses its last player, a pervert who plays only to fuck the NPCs, as a means of escaping into the real world.
A furry uses a magic, wish-granting e-mail to live out a convoluted commission between him and his mate.
An elderly gentleman receives a strange halloween mask from his father's old prop house, which is being dismantled and moved. He uses this mask's transformative powers to take down the mobsters shaking down his new business for protection money.
A college student with an overbearingly verbally abusive roommate pines over a cartoon character crush, only to have the character crush come to life on a VHS cassette.
A fox receives a mysterious package: a full-sized robotic reconstruction of himself, down to every inch of fur. His robot clone seems solely interested in engaging him in a romantic relationship, and soon the temptation is too much to bear.
Anyway, that's it! No idea what to do with any of these. ^^
New queue, more commissions!
Posted 14 years agoHey peeps, trying to figure out a new way to handle commissions here. I'm putting the queue here so you can see how full up it is. Leave a comment to get on the list, and I'll reply to let you know you're on it, but all of the details for prices and such are in my Commission PERMAJOURNAL. Once you're on the list, please send me a note with all of the details you want, references and such. I use notes to keep track of commissions, so please only send ONE NOTE with all of your information, otherwise my inbox becomes an impossible to navigate mess! NBD if you have to send more than one but it'd be a huge favor to me to have all the info in a single note.
I've added a "budget" option to the list, which is a $25 lineart sketch commission, ala so: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5793476
If you have any ideas that aren't on my list, feel free to request those too!
CURRENT ROUND SLOTS:
1-
flir (done, paid)
2- flir
3-
balladaheart
4-
keweyroo
5-
Coco_chocolate_wolf
6-
lennud
7-
deezlberries
8-
9-
10-
I've added a "budget" option to the list, which is a $25 lineart sketch commission, ala so: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5793476
If you have any ideas that aren't on my list, feel free to request those too!
CURRENT ROUND SLOTS:
1-
flir (done, paid)2-
flir3-
balladaheart4-
keweyroo5-
Coco_chocolate_wolf6-
lennud7-
deezlberries8-
9-
10-
Moving In
Posted 14 years agoSeeing as I'll be moving as soon as I can scrounge up the cash (probably sometime around when I get my first or second paycheque, whenever that happens), the idea of picking up and staking a claim in a different place has been on my mind a lot lately. I'm looking for a full-time job, and thinking about my budget. Doing commissions for a living affords a very free but kind of destitute lifestyle. I have relatively few connections in any of the fields I'm trying to break into, plus I went to art school, so all of my best prospects are entry level retail jobs, punctuated by the occasional freelance gig. My future looks bleak and empoverished, maybe I made some bad decisions about post-secondary education, maybe my crippling social anxiety is beating me down. Anyway, the end result is wavering on the edge of depression. While I'm still sane, I might as well do one of those long journals I do every now and then.
As a response to the stress I've been spending a lot more time here, in the furryverse. It's been making me think a lot about fandoms in general.
Specifically, the new one on the scene, the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom. The show itself is very well-written, the animators did a great job, Lauren Faust has a fantastic eye for design, and I think most importantly, it's a friendly and inclusive universe where everyone is going to help you out if you have a problem in your life.
Nowadays, in America, where wage slavery is the common form of employment, where governments and corporations are slowly whittling away at our rights in the name of securing their own interests, it's easy to forget who you are, what your story is. Understanding financial systems, pharmaceuticals, the entertainment industry, even knowing where your food comes from represents such a baroque task that people would rather couch themselves in shady alternative currencies, homeopathic remedies and snake oil etc. because they offer an elegant and simple solution.
I was prompted by this opinion piece by M Kichell, called Twilight of the American Idols, in which he seems conflicted about the Twilight phenomenon... on the one hand, it's a terrible story. On the other, its mass appeal is seductive to a struggling artist. That kind of fandom meta-analysis what I want to talk about here.
Why do some works of art spawn fandoms and others don't? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, but my own thoughts are as follows: fandoms come out of works of fiction that people want to move in to. They literally want to live in those worlds. Natch, it's impossible, and they know it's impossible, and yet there's a sense of nostalgia for whatever alternate dimension. People want to build the Companion Cube. People wanna dress in steampunk gasmasks or fursuits. Why do they want to move in? Usually because they'd fit into that world better than this one. The world rewards their style of humor. Its history is more interesting, its population more stimulating. The evildoers are cartoonish and unquestionably evil, the good guys heroic, there's no reason to feel ambivalent about anything, and every moment is structured to keep your mind stimulated and entertained.
But ultimately it's a siren song, isn't it? If you're not careful, you end up stuck in yet another seductive religion. Sure, it puts the world into context! It gives you a nice framework or even just a distraction to get through the tough times. However, it can tell you thinks about the world that aren't true, that promote a narrative of racial stereotypes (how many people fell in love with Avatar knowing what the term "noble savage" represents?) and reinforce traditional and restrictive gender roles in which women usually end up happily doing whatever some princely guy says. It's not all political, either... I quite like the inclusive message put forth by MLP:FIM, and I still like this kind of post-scarcity peace and space exploration universe Star Trek frequently postulates. This isn't about content, this is about the world knowing the difference between reality and fiction, especially as technology improves and the fiction encroaches upon reality without gaining the fractal complexity of the world outside the screen.
We're smart, and we know reality isn't a universe that's shown to us through a tiny window on a screen, fed to us in 22 minute clips or between a folded piece of printed card stock. We understand these artistic creations aren't the messy democracy of the street. They're dictatorships. They're gated communities. But that's what makes them so seductive, and I can't help but be taken in by the spiraling shape sometimes. It's kind of disquieting.
As a response to the stress I've been spending a lot more time here, in the furryverse. It's been making me think a lot about fandoms in general.
Specifically, the new one on the scene, the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom. The show itself is very well-written, the animators did a great job, Lauren Faust has a fantastic eye for design, and I think most importantly, it's a friendly and inclusive universe where everyone is going to help you out if you have a problem in your life.
Nowadays, in America, where wage slavery is the common form of employment, where governments and corporations are slowly whittling away at our rights in the name of securing their own interests, it's easy to forget who you are, what your story is. Understanding financial systems, pharmaceuticals, the entertainment industry, even knowing where your food comes from represents such a baroque task that people would rather couch themselves in shady alternative currencies, homeopathic remedies and snake oil etc. because they offer an elegant and simple solution.
I was prompted by this opinion piece by M Kichell, called Twilight of the American Idols, in which he seems conflicted about the Twilight phenomenon... on the one hand, it's a terrible story. On the other, its mass appeal is seductive to a struggling artist. That kind of fandom meta-analysis what I want to talk about here.
Why do some works of art spawn fandoms and others don't? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, but my own thoughts are as follows: fandoms come out of works of fiction that people want to move in to. They literally want to live in those worlds. Natch, it's impossible, and they know it's impossible, and yet there's a sense of nostalgia for whatever alternate dimension. People want to build the Companion Cube. People wanna dress in steampunk gasmasks or fursuits. Why do they want to move in? Usually because they'd fit into that world better than this one. The world rewards their style of humor. Its history is more interesting, its population more stimulating. The evildoers are cartoonish and unquestionably evil, the good guys heroic, there's no reason to feel ambivalent about anything, and every moment is structured to keep your mind stimulated and entertained.
But ultimately it's a siren song, isn't it? If you're not careful, you end up stuck in yet another seductive religion. Sure, it puts the world into context! It gives you a nice framework or even just a distraction to get through the tough times. However, it can tell you thinks about the world that aren't true, that promote a narrative of racial stereotypes (how many people fell in love with Avatar knowing what the term "noble savage" represents?) and reinforce traditional and restrictive gender roles in which women usually end up happily doing whatever some princely guy says. It's not all political, either... I quite like the inclusive message put forth by MLP:FIM, and I still like this kind of post-scarcity peace and space exploration universe Star Trek frequently postulates. This isn't about content, this is about the world knowing the difference between reality and fiction, especially as technology improves and the fiction encroaches upon reality without gaining the fractal complexity of the world outside the screen.
We're smart, and we know reality isn't a universe that's shown to us through a tiny window on a screen, fed to us in 22 minute clips or between a folded piece of printed card stock. We understand these artistic creations aren't the messy democracy of the street. They're dictatorships. They're gated communities. But that's what makes them so seductive, and I can't help but be taken in by the spiraling shape sometimes. It's kind of disquieting.
Smears!
Posted 14 years agoCheck it out, animation's motion blur effect now has a tumblr!
http://animationsmears.tumblr.com/
What surprises me most about these is how different they are from animator to animator. These stylistic effects only last a frame, and because of the way the brain thinks about moving images they slip into a subliminal zone where we don't actively notice them, but they still mark an animator's individual style. Some look more like a flowing liquid, others are more rubbery and stretchy. Some have multiple instances of the moving body part as though three or four frames had been collapsed into one. Pretty cool, I think!
Cartoons are pretty great, guys. :3c
http://animationsmears.tumblr.com/
What surprises me most about these is how different they are from animator to animator. These stylistic effects only last a frame, and because of the way the brain thinks about moving images they slip into a subliminal zone where we don't actively notice them, but they still mark an animator's individual style. Some look more like a flowing liquid, others are more rubbery and stretchy. Some have multiple instances of the moving body part as though three or four frames had been collapsed into one. Pretty cool, I think!
Cartoons are pretty great, guys. :3c
Streaming!
Posted 14 years agohttp://www.watchtail.com/view.php?v=swatcher
No idea what I'll work on! D:
Gonna go voice on this one too!
No idea what I'll work on! D:
Gonna go voice on this one too!
Five new slots and a reminder about the podcast!
Posted 14 years agoHey y'all, five new commission slots are available! I'm going to see if I can book it through the queue this weekend and get everything done in a flurry of activity. Click that link for additional details on pricing and the best way to get in touch with me.
Also, this is another reminder for my podcast project! I'm super close to having enough people to do a recording about transformation as a fetish. If you have any interesting insights on the topic and want to engage in a round table discussion, let me know! I've added a link to the TF podcast organization journal in my journal header, click that for more info.
Also, this is another reminder for my podcast project! I'm super close to having enough people to do a recording about transformation as a fetish. If you have any interesting insights on the topic and want to engage in a round table discussion, let me know! I've added a link to the TF podcast organization journal in my journal header, click that for more info.
Podcast followup
Posted 14 years agoThis is a followup post to this journal, but I'll try to summarize the details again here!
I like TF, and I like hearing other people talk about it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. So I want to do a series of round-table discussions so that various people from the TF community can get the word out about their point of view. I'm not expecting these to carry any authoritative weight, they're more for the fun of making them than for the end product!
These podcasts are finished:
Costumes and TF
The following topics have generated some interest! I'd like to get five guests per topic.
TF as a fetish: (full)
The mind and TF: (full)
Character TF: (three people, missing two)
TF Roleplay: (three people, missing two)
Inanimate TF: (two people, missing three)
Human/Animal TF: (one person, missing four)
TF art: (two people, missing three)
Gender and TF: (one person, missing four)
I'm still looking for volunteers for the following topics:
TF writing
The online TF community
If you have a suggestion for a topic I haven't listed, please, I'd love to hear it!
PLEASE PICK A TOPIC. Once one fills up, that's it! It's first come, first serve. The only qualifications necessary are an excess of passion and a variety of insights. Big names, small names, it doesn't matter. And guess what? I'll keep the participants secret from each other until it's time to record, so you'll have no idea who you're going to be talking to. :3
If any of you need help choosing, here are the topics again. I've added a few prompts this time, in case you're not sure what I mean by the titles:
- Transformation art (what makes a TF picture effective? what are the particular challenges of drawing a transformation? single images vs. sequences, pros and cons? best places to find and post tf drawings. your favorite pictures and why.)
- Transformation writing (where do you start a TF story? describing the aftermath. using words to make someone feel like they're in the story. best places to find and post tf stories. your favorite stories and why.)
- Gender and transformation (transgender transformation. feminism and transformation. the appeal of gender stereotypes and transgressing gender boundaries.)
- Inanimate transformation (dehumanization, machines, plants, immobility vs. mobility. transforming a human into something non-anthropomorphic.)
- Character transformation (identity fluidity, tf into recognizable/pop-culture characters, assuming the identity of a friend/enemy/stranger, wanting-to-be crushes)
- Human/animal transformation (mythology, shapeshifters, some animals are more popular as tf species than others and why. realistic animals vs. symbolic animals.)
- Transformation as a fetish (D/s relationships in TF, trigger moments, difficulty of having a TF fetish, keeping it out of the public eye vs. being open about it)
- The TF community on the web (can the community be mapped? how we support/argue against community. the role of social media sites. the tf community on youtube. tf community without the web, is it possible?)
- The mind and transformation (what could be happening in the mind of someone who's transforming? mental transformations. hypnosis. psychoactive drugs. simulating transformation IRL by fooling the brain.)
- Costumes and transformation (relationship between costumed performance and transformation fandom. building costumes with transformation interests in mind; materials and technical considerations. the assumption of an alter ego.)
- TF Roleplay (where do people roleplay? the importance of roleplay in the TF community. roleplay and writing/other artforms.)
Leave a comment (or note me) and please tell me which topic(s) you want to be involved in. If you have a clear preference for a particular topic, only list your favorite. This helps me decide where to slot you in.
I'm looking forward to doing this. :)
I like TF, and I like hearing other people talk about it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. So I want to do a series of round-table discussions so that various people from the TF community can get the word out about their point of view. I'm not expecting these to carry any authoritative weight, they're more for the fun of making them than for the end product!
These podcasts are finished:
Costumes and TF
The following topics have generated some interest! I'd like to get five guests per topic.
TF as a fetish: (full)
The mind and TF: (full)
Character TF: (three people, missing two)
TF Roleplay: (three people, missing two)
Inanimate TF: (two people, missing three)
Human/Animal TF: (one person, missing four)
TF art: (two people, missing three)
Gender and TF: (one person, missing four)
I'm still looking for volunteers for the following topics:
TF writing
The online TF community
If you have a suggestion for a topic I haven't listed, please, I'd love to hear it!
PLEASE PICK A TOPIC. Once one fills up, that's it! It's first come, first serve. The only qualifications necessary are an excess of passion and a variety of insights. Big names, small names, it doesn't matter. And guess what? I'll keep the participants secret from each other until it's time to record, so you'll have no idea who you're going to be talking to. :3
If any of you need help choosing, here are the topics again. I've added a few prompts this time, in case you're not sure what I mean by the titles:
- Transformation art (what makes a TF picture effective? what are the particular challenges of drawing a transformation? single images vs. sequences, pros and cons? best places to find and post tf drawings. your favorite pictures and why.)
- Transformation writing (where do you start a TF story? describing the aftermath. using words to make someone feel like they're in the story. best places to find and post tf stories. your favorite stories and why.)
- Gender and transformation (transgender transformation. feminism and transformation. the appeal of gender stereotypes and transgressing gender boundaries.)
- Inanimate transformation (dehumanization, machines, plants, immobility vs. mobility. transforming a human into something non-anthropomorphic.)
- Character transformation (identity fluidity, tf into recognizable/pop-culture characters, assuming the identity of a friend/enemy/stranger, wanting-to-be crushes)
- Human/animal transformation (mythology, shapeshifters, some animals are more popular as tf species than others and why. realistic animals vs. symbolic animals.)
- Transformation as a fetish (D/s relationships in TF, trigger moments, difficulty of having a TF fetish, keeping it out of the public eye vs. being open about it)
- The TF community on the web (can the community be mapped? how we support/argue against community. the role of social media sites. the tf community on youtube. tf community without the web, is it possible?)
- The mind and transformation (what could be happening in the mind of someone who's transforming? mental transformations. hypnosis. psychoactive drugs. simulating transformation IRL by fooling the brain.)
- Costumes and transformation (relationship between costumed performance and transformation fandom. building costumes with transformation interests in mind; materials and technical considerations. the assumption of an alter ego.)
- TF Roleplay (where do people roleplay? the importance of roleplay in the TF community. roleplay and writing/other artforms.)
Leave a comment (or note me) and please tell me which topic(s) you want to be involved in. If you have a clear preference for a particular topic, only list your favorite. This helps me decide where to slot you in.
I'm looking forward to doing this. :)
TF "Podcast" project?
Posted 14 years agoSo hey, I loved doing that 5 year anniversary audio stream thing, why not do more podcasty stuff? I know there's already a TF-themed podcast out there, Analogues. I don't want to snipe their business, so this particular thing will be 100% discussion, round-table style, for about an hour, with a different focus every episode. Here are a few topics that I drummed up to generate interesting conversation:
- Transformation art
- Transformation writing
- Gender and transformation
- Inanimate transformation
- Character transformation
- Human/animal transformation
- Transformation as a fetish
- The TF community on the web
- The mind and transformation
- Costumes and transformation
I'm looking for a group of maybe four different guests per episode. I'm looking for people who are good conversationalists who might have some sort of unique insight into the topic at hand! Basically, if you like TG-TF and you feel confident talking about it, I'd love to have you on the Gender and Transformation show. ^^
If any of you are interested in talking about a particular topic, let me know! And if you know someone who does TF art who's not reading this journal and might be interested in participating, let THEM know! And if you have an idea for a topic that I might have left out, tell me!
Let's do this! :D
- Transformation art
- Transformation writing
- Gender and transformation
- Inanimate transformation
- Character transformation
- Human/animal transformation
- Transformation as a fetish
- The TF community on the web
- The mind and transformation
- Costumes and transformation
I'm looking for a group of maybe four different guests per episode. I'm looking for people who are good conversationalists who might have some sort of unique insight into the topic at hand! Basically, if you like TG-TF and you feel confident talking about it, I'd love to have you on the Gender and Transformation show. ^^
If any of you are interested in talking about a particular topic, let me know! And if you know someone who does TF art who's not reading this journal and might be interested in participating, let THEM know! And if you have an idea for a topic that I might have left out, tell me!
Let's do this! :D
Hey Canadians!
Posted 14 years agoToday is our day to vote! So if you haven't already, go do your democratic duty. Let's see a high turnout this year. If you haven't registered to vote in your riding, bring some government ID (passport, driver's licence) and a proof of residency. To find out where to vote, and for more information visit the Elections Canada website.
Aujourd'hui nous votons! Si vous ne l'avez pas déja fait, répondez donc à l'appel de la démocratie. Cet année, on veut serieusement voir une foule. Si vous n'avez pas encore enregistré pour voter dans votre circonscription, emmenez de l'identification officiel (genre un passport, un permit de conduire) et une preuve de résidence. Pour trouver où voter, et pour en savoir plus, SVP visitez le site web de Elections Canada.
Aujourd'hui nous votons! Si vous ne l'avez pas déja fait, répondez donc à l'appel de la démocratie. Cet année, on veut serieusement voir une foule. Si vous n'avez pas encore enregistré pour voter dans votre circonscription, emmenez de l'identification officiel (genre un passport, un permit de conduire) et une preuve de résidence. Pour trouver où voter, et pour en savoir plus, SVP visitez le site web de Elections Canada.
Update on those "morph" commissions!
Posted 14 years agoI still have SEVEN slots left in this round of commissions!
Often when doing a new sort of commission, there's a bit of an experimental period to see how much time it takes, what kind of effort is involved, etc. The drawing I did for Lodoss took much longer than I had estimated! That is why, when this queue is done, I'll be raising the price on this type of commission to $65.
HOWEVER! If you're still interested in getting a commission of this type, DO NOT DESPAIR!
Until my queue fills up, morph commissions are still available for $50! That means RIGHT NOW would be the best time to snatch one up, with a caveat, of course: to be fair to the people who are able to pay up front, I can't add anyone to the queue if they don't have the money to pay upon the completion of the drawing. Regular commissions are still $40 for a single referenced character and that's not going to go up any time soon, so if you miss the boat on this, you still have an alternative. ^^
This round is FULL! Thanks everyone!
Refer to my Commissions PERMAJOURNAL to see the current queue (it's at the bottom!) and the general info on how to commission me (you send me a note).
Often when doing a new sort of commission, there's a bit of an experimental period to see how much time it takes, what kind of effort is involved, etc. The drawing I did for Lodoss took much longer than I had estimated! That is why, when this queue is done, I'll be raising the price on this type of commission to $65.
HOWEVER! If you're still interested in getting a commission of this type, DO NOT DESPAIR!
This round is FULL! Thanks everyone!
Refer to my Commissions PERMAJOURNAL to see the current queue (it's at the bottom!) and the general info on how to commission me (you send me a note).
Costumes, transformation, and permanence
Posted 14 years agoOne of the nicest and probably the most mundane aspects of costumes is that when you get tired of wearing them, you can just take 'em off. It's nice.
For anyone that's spent a long time in a costume, or worn makeup and a prosthetic for a while, as fun as it is it's a huge relief to remove the thing and feel the air on your skin and feel, I dunno, natural again. You get into the shower and wash off all the sweat and makeup and adhesive residue and you just feel clean and fresh. You're naked and your skin feels great, there are no clothes hanging off of you, no underwear elastic digging into your waist. Wearing a costume is a tradeoff: you feel emotionally free to do whatever's in character, and yet you're physically uncomfortable. Without a costume, I guess it's the other way around.
One aspect that I don't see reflected a lot in costume-triggered TF is that when a costume literally becomes your body, you automatically lose the physical discomforts of having something pressed against your body. Your new body feels normal in the way I described above, even though the form might be totally outrageous. Especially if the form is totally outrageous. And to me, the combo of feeling natural and un-costumed while being in the form of what you wanted to dress up as is a really attractive combo!
Even though you might have put on this mask or whatever in a fit of pique, curiosity, the indulgence of a sudden urge, or just for a laugh, now you can't remove it. When it really is your body, you have to do all these little biological things like washing your hands and face, sleeping, using the toilet, eating, without the precariousness inherent in wearing a mask or suit, where you might get spaghetti sauce all over your expensive face. When it's skin, you can just lick your lips and dab your chin with a paper towel.
For instance, if you were wearing bondage gear and it became "real", you would have shiny leather for skin, with metal studs sticking out of it, and straps and O rings a plenty for people to hook on to. You would have to shower looking like that, you would have to go grocery shopping, you'd have to ride the bus. It wouldn't feel physically weird at all. But it would definitely make people look!
Or even just clothes. I really like the idea of clothes that are just skin, like the folds and stuff are embossed into your body, and they have the squishiness and warmth of flesh. Even though you'd be dressed, you'd feel naked.
Permanence with TF is always an ambivalent thing, and I personally forget that I need to remind people how permanence can be a good thing when their first inclination is regret. Mask-induced TF is one of those instances where some little decision you made on a whim ends up altering your life completely, so moments of regret are a natural (and kind of attractive!) element of that. Ultimately there will always be that one person who actually kind of thinks you're more attractive like this than you were before, and just that is enough to remove it from nightmare fuel world, no matter how freaky you might look now. While you were just going to wear this mask for a few seconds to tease your friend because of her weird obsessions, you're now, perhaps permanently, a living breathing realization of her deepest and most embarrassing fantasy. Or the mask that you stole from the costume shop bonds itself to your head, and now you have no choice but to either go back and beg for forgiveness, or live forever as a freak of nature. If that's not the beginning of a really steamy story, I don't know what is. <3
Anyway, tl;dr—costumes are uncomfortable, making costumes "real" removes the discomfort without removing the form. As a side effect, removal is impossible without outside intervention, and that can be really attractive.
For anyone that's spent a long time in a costume, or worn makeup and a prosthetic for a while, as fun as it is it's a huge relief to remove the thing and feel the air on your skin and feel, I dunno, natural again. You get into the shower and wash off all the sweat and makeup and adhesive residue and you just feel clean and fresh. You're naked and your skin feels great, there are no clothes hanging off of you, no underwear elastic digging into your waist. Wearing a costume is a tradeoff: you feel emotionally free to do whatever's in character, and yet you're physically uncomfortable. Without a costume, I guess it's the other way around.
One aspect that I don't see reflected a lot in costume-triggered TF is that when a costume literally becomes your body, you automatically lose the physical discomforts of having something pressed against your body. Your new body feels normal in the way I described above, even though the form might be totally outrageous. Especially if the form is totally outrageous. And to me, the combo of feeling natural and un-costumed while being in the form of what you wanted to dress up as is a really attractive combo!
Even though you might have put on this mask or whatever in a fit of pique, curiosity, the indulgence of a sudden urge, or just for a laugh, now you can't remove it. When it really is your body, you have to do all these little biological things like washing your hands and face, sleeping, using the toilet, eating, without the precariousness inherent in wearing a mask or suit, where you might get spaghetti sauce all over your expensive face. When it's skin, you can just lick your lips and dab your chin with a paper towel.
For instance, if you were wearing bondage gear and it became "real", you would have shiny leather for skin, with metal studs sticking out of it, and straps and O rings a plenty for people to hook on to. You would have to shower looking like that, you would have to go grocery shopping, you'd have to ride the bus. It wouldn't feel physically weird at all. But it would definitely make people look!
Or even just clothes. I really like the idea of clothes that are just skin, like the folds and stuff are embossed into your body, and they have the squishiness and warmth of flesh. Even though you'd be dressed, you'd feel naked.
Permanence with TF is always an ambivalent thing, and I personally forget that I need to remind people how permanence can be a good thing when their first inclination is regret. Mask-induced TF is one of those instances where some little decision you made on a whim ends up altering your life completely, so moments of regret are a natural (and kind of attractive!) element of that. Ultimately there will always be that one person who actually kind of thinks you're more attractive like this than you were before, and just that is enough to remove it from nightmare fuel world, no matter how freaky you might look now. While you were just going to wear this mask for a few seconds to tease your friend because of her weird obsessions, you're now, perhaps permanently, a living breathing realization of her deepest and most embarrassing fantasy. Or the mask that you stole from the costume shop bonds itself to your head, and now you have no choice but to either go back and beg for forgiveness, or live forever as a freak of nature. If that's not the beginning of a really steamy story, I don't know what is. <3
Anyway, tl;dr—costumes are uncomfortable, making costumes "real" removes the discomfort without removing the form. As a side effect, removal is impossible without outside intervention, and that can be really attractive.
I think about transformation too much
Posted 14 years agoFeel free to ignore this one, this is another late night journal to exorcize the ghosts demanding access to my brain. I gotta sleep here, ghosts. Go away.
I've been meaning to draw clown tf for a while. I knew I was running the risk of alienating everyone, but I went ahead and did it anyway because I wanted to know if there was a right way to do it and if I was capable of doing it in a way that could be considered appealing! I actually enjoy failure, if I can learn from it—which is why I despise those one word "wat" comments, they just drive me into an irrational frothy rage, which is I guess the point, but I digress—that's why I draw a lot of really weird stuff. It's experimental, it's a learning process, and since I love TF so much I want to understand how it works and why people like me like it so much.
You know that game Mastermind where you have to guess a sequence of four colored pegs, where all you're told is how many you got right, but not which ones? That's how I feel whenever I press submit. Only there are an infinite amount of correct sequences and four times as many different colored pegs and I'm kind of losing the metaphor here, but you know what I mean. Some things are popular, some things aren't, and because the appeal of transformation is such a lizard brain phenomenon, trying to determine which elements of a given picture worked and which didn't is a gong show. I might have drawn the right thing the wrong way, it might have been perfect except for the style in which I drew the eyes. You can't please everyone, but you sure can get an impression of what's a niche interest and what, statistically speaking, people are going to +fav the most.
Let me just rattle off some TF format stuff. Transformation is all about the change from form A to form B.
This is usually initiated by some trigger macguffin. The trigger usually doesn't matter, unless it's a person (e.g. a witch) because her relationship with form A is going to change when it becomes form B.
The person in form B is going to be treated differently by everyone else than they were in form A, and so form B ought to contrast in a meaningful way with the person's former lifestyle.
The relationship that the TF-ee has with form B should dictate the duration and setting for the transformation.
Shorter, even instantaneous "poof" TFs are used when you want a person to keep a drawn character somewhat ignorant of their body's changes, and that works best in a public setting where people might comment on a part of your body you didn't know you had. Since people only see you once the transformation is over, they'll never guess that you used to be something else, and your former identity is a secret.
The longer a transformation, the more you have the ability to get used to the changes as they come, since you'll be aware of every change as it happens. That said, longer transformations lend themselves to a more pleasurable experience, and are best used when a person's relationship with form B is a positive one.
Most furries like TF because they find animals (especially anthropomorphic animals) to be more aesthetically appealing than human beings. Part of the TF attraction in the fandom is body dysmorphic. That's why most TF furries prefer slow, generally pleasurable and clean transformations into things that other furries will find attractive, and why they dislike quick or awkward/weird transformations into generally unappealing creatures. Pleasurable TFs are kind of a checklist: looking at hands, feeling face, side view of muzzle/beak growing, back view of tail coming out of pants, paws ripping the soles off of the shoes, maybe clothes bursting as muscles bulge, gender normative body, visible arousal, look of relief as the transformation ends.
The others like TF because it's an alienating, humiliating, or confining experience, and so quick and dirty and awkward and weird are the operating terms. This is the kind of TF I like, but that's because I'm one of those horrible fetish guys who is ruining the fandom. IMHO, this kind of TF is for locals only, it's not for the tourists who are into TF on a lark because they wish they could become a furry IRL to match their true soul, it's for the people who would specifically enjoy the awkwardness of becoming a furry IRL.
Anyway gosh I've written enough about this. That is all!
I've been meaning to draw clown tf for a while. I knew I was running the risk of alienating everyone, but I went ahead and did it anyway because I wanted to know if there was a right way to do it and if I was capable of doing it in a way that could be considered appealing! I actually enjoy failure, if I can learn from it—which is why I despise those one word "wat" comments, they just drive me into an irrational frothy rage, which is I guess the point, but I digress—that's why I draw a lot of really weird stuff. It's experimental, it's a learning process, and since I love TF so much I want to understand how it works and why people like me like it so much.
You know that game Mastermind where you have to guess a sequence of four colored pegs, where all you're told is how many you got right, but not which ones? That's how I feel whenever I press submit. Only there are an infinite amount of correct sequences and four times as many different colored pegs and I'm kind of losing the metaphor here, but you know what I mean. Some things are popular, some things aren't, and because the appeal of transformation is such a lizard brain phenomenon, trying to determine which elements of a given picture worked and which didn't is a gong show. I might have drawn the right thing the wrong way, it might have been perfect except for the style in which I drew the eyes. You can't please everyone, but you sure can get an impression of what's a niche interest and what, statistically speaking, people are going to +fav the most.
Let me just rattle off some TF format stuff. Transformation is all about the change from form A to form B.
This is usually initiated by some trigger macguffin. The trigger usually doesn't matter, unless it's a person (e.g. a witch) because her relationship with form A is going to change when it becomes form B.
The person in form B is going to be treated differently by everyone else than they were in form A, and so form B ought to contrast in a meaningful way with the person's former lifestyle.
The relationship that the TF-ee has with form B should dictate the duration and setting for the transformation.
Shorter, even instantaneous "poof" TFs are used when you want a person to keep a drawn character somewhat ignorant of their body's changes, and that works best in a public setting where people might comment on a part of your body you didn't know you had. Since people only see you once the transformation is over, they'll never guess that you used to be something else, and your former identity is a secret.
The longer a transformation, the more you have the ability to get used to the changes as they come, since you'll be aware of every change as it happens. That said, longer transformations lend themselves to a more pleasurable experience, and are best used when a person's relationship with form B is a positive one.
Most furries like TF because they find animals (especially anthropomorphic animals) to be more aesthetically appealing than human beings. Part of the TF attraction in the fandom is body dysmorphic. That's why most TF furries prefer slow, generally pleasurable and clean transformations into things that other furries will find attractive, and why they dislike quick or awkward/weird transformations into generally unappealing creatures. Pleasurable TFs are kind of a checklist: looking at hands, feeling face, side view of muzzle/beak growing, back view of tail coming out of pants, paws ripping the soles off of the shoes, maybe clothes bursting as muscles bulge, gender normative body, visible arousal, look of relief as the transformation ends.
The others like TF because it's an alienating, humiliating, or confining experience, and so quick and dirty and awkward and weird are the operating terms. This is the kind of TF I like, but that's because I'm one of those horrible fetish guys who is ruining the fandom. IMHO, this kind of TF is for locals only, it's not for the tourists who are into TF on a lark because they wish they could become a furry IRL to match their true soul, it's for the people who would specifically enjoy the awkwardness of becoming a furry IRL.
Anyway gosh I've written enough about this. That is all!
Fursuiters! Come to my aid!
Posted 14 years agoI'm trying to find out if there is a list of rules that costumed characters at Disney parks need to follow, and if there is, what those rules are. Optionally, I would take a list of rules from non-Disney parks, but I'm mostly concerned with being able to attribute the source to something more than an anecdote. I'm writing an essay and I'd like to be able to cite my sources on this.
If any of you could point me in the right direction, I would love that. Googling is getting me nowhere! I've tried all sorts of search terms and I'm not finding anything. You'd think that searching for [disney cast member rules] would turn up something interesting, but the first result is Yahoo Answers. That's BS.
If any of you could point me in the right direction, I would love that. Googling is getting me nowhere! I've tried all sorts of search terms and I'm not finding anything. You'd think that searching for [disney cast member rules] would turn up something interesting, but the first result is Yahoo Answers. That's BS.
One of the few advantages of not having a face
Posted 14 years agoA project
Posted 14 years agoNot that I need a project right now. This is mostly to have an inconsequential project to daydream about while I slog through my workload to all the weird deadlines I have coming up. I'm not going to do this anytime soon. But I'd like to be able to think about it. ^^
I'm pretty cool with a lot of my old art, I'm not embarrassed by it or anything, but obviously some of it could stand to see some improvement. So I'm going to redo one of my old pictures, a sort of second iteration on it. A second draft of the whole thing. But I'm not a good judge of my own art and I forgive myself a lot of my mistakes. That's where you all come in. I want to know which image I've drawn that you're familiar with that you would consider the most poorly executed. That doesn't necessarily mean that the drawing is bad, although it could be that. I guess, define "poorly executed" however you want. Whatever the popular consensus is, I'll redo that pic and try to improve it.
Obviously the older the picture is the more dramatic the change, so let me know what y'all think!
EDIT: I wasn't sure if I was going to include the scraps gallery in this, which is why I didn't mention anything, but now that I think of it, I'm only going to revisit a picture if you found it in the main gallery section of my page. I put a lot of half-baked ideas and throwaway sketches in scraps, and the spirit of the project is to revisit a completed drawing, not finish something that's obviously not done.
Also, another tip... pick images that you don't like. Or else pick images that you WOULD like, if it weren't for some addition or stylistic decision that makes it very off-putting.
I'm pretty cool with a lot of my old art, I'm not embarrassed by it or anything, but obviously some of it could stand to see some improvement. So I'm going to redo one of my old pictures, a sort of second iteration on it. A second draft of the whole thing. But I'm not a good judge of my own art and I forgive myself a lot of my mistakes. That's where you all come in. I want to know which image I've drawn that you're familiar with that you would consider the most poorly executed. That doesn't necessarily mean that the drawing is bad, although it could be that. I guess, define "poorly executed" however you want. Whatever the popular consensus is, I'll redo that pic and try to improve it.
Obviously the older the picture is the more dramatic the change, so let me know what y'all think!
EDIT: I wasn't sure if I was going to include the scraps gallery in this, which is why I didn't mention anything, but now that I think of it, I'm only going to revisit a picture if you found it in the main gallery section of my page. I put a lot of half-baked ideas and throwaway sketches in scraps, and the spirit of the project is to revisit a completed drawing, not finish something that's obviously not done.
Also, another tip... pick images that you don't like. Or else pick images that you WOULD like, if it weren't for some addition or stylistic decision that makes it very off-putting.
Kongo Roo
Posted 14 years ago
larathelabrat found this the other day. Basically it's EVERYTHING that I love about 'toon kangaroos in a single character (goofy bodies, oversized feet, huge tails, pouch fixations). Yeah, this guy is such a hottie to me. Unfortunately, the other character is the typical sort of racist caricature of the kind you would expect in a cartoon from 1946. So uhhhh with that warning in mind, enjoy what you can!(Also there is surprise micro and vore at the end. Cartoons! This is why I love them so much.)
Onemoon chapter synopses
Posted 14 years agoFuck, I should summarize these so that people can actually find the kind of thing they want to read.
Part 1 - Link
Introduction to Norris, a human traveller, and Phit, an impish rubber devil, who becomes Norris' possession after winning a carnival game. (includes inflation, polymorphism, rubber, bio male on rubber male sex)
Part 2 - Link
Norris tells Phit about his destination: Maddragon. Phit gabs at Norris about his personal history and how he came to be a rubber devil. (includes clones, more gay sex, living suits)
Part 3 - Link
Norris and Phit arrive at the Maddragon Arms, they meet Yolanda and Phthalo. He's admitted into the Arms and given a room. (includes mild paint TF, subtle mind control, two-headed forms)
Part 4 - Link
Norris accidentally activates a trap. (includes nonconsentual nullification, blanking, neutering)
Part 5 - Link
A mysterious creature seizes Norris and, thinking he's an intruder, proceeds to tease his blanked body. (includes blanking aftermath, orgasm denial, teasing)
Part 6 - Link
Zizz is revealed. Yolanda and Zizz plan on sending Norris on some sort of fun mission to prove himself useful to the Arms. He's fitted with a cock which he is explicitly instructed not to let anyone touch. (includes costume TF, multifurry, living toys, voice removal)
Part 7 - Link
Yolanda gives Norris, disguised as a multi-faced lion named Foo Foo, detailed instructions about releasing a fellow Maddragon resident from captivity in neighboring Baudi. On his way out, he's accompanied by a cute girl who leads him into a trap. (includes female to male TG, merging and equine transformation, inanimate TF)
Part 8 - Link
Norris as Foo Foo is abducted. His captors start to violate his body, which Norris rolls with until he remembers that he can't let anyone touch his cock. He escapes from the carriage and ultimately ends up in Baudi. (incudes male on monster rape situations, orgasm denial, and feline power fantasies)
Part 9 - Link
Foo Foo is given an acid bath by Prissy Valentine, who we meet for the first time. (includes femdom and mostly pain and discomfort)
Part 10 - Link
Norris finds the captive woman, who turns out to be a lycanthropic shapeshifter. He extracts her from her cell using his magical cock. Yes, you heard me. (includes shapeshifting women, CTF)
Part 11 - Link
Lily the wolfgirl is released, and Norris is taken out of the Foo Foo costume. (includes reverse CTF, reverse costume TF)
Part 12 - Link
Phthalo comes to visit for tea and conversation. (includes paint TF, teapot heads, udders)
Part 13 - Link
Phit and Norris explore Maddragon. (includes introspection and nothing really kinky!)
Part 14 - Link
Phthalo and Norris kink out in a painting. (includes paint TF, multiple faces, neuter-focus, monster fetish)
Part 15 - Link
Zizz gives Norris a fox costume to wear, and he puts it on in an unconventional way. (includes costume TF, body confusion)
Part 16 - Link
Zizz and Norris go to visit a pub run by a clown. Clowns have curious undercarriage. (includes clowns wearing codpieces)
Part 17 - Link
Norris discovers what's special about Rocko the bartender. He also gains an extra dick and four arms in an unrelated event. (includes more reality-defying bodies, gay blowjobs, limb growth)
Part 18 - Link
Norris returns with Zizz. There's some gossip in the front room. Phit reappears, frozen. (includes more paint TF, teapot heads, excess limbs, petrification via frozen liquid filling)
Part 19 - Link
Phit thaws out, Zizz and Norris help. (includes polymorphism, de-freezing)
Part 20 - Link
Norris punishes Phit by filling him with water and making him immobile. There's a party for Phthalo where they're all going to dress up as him, so Zizz removes Norris from the fox costume. (includes multiple forms of inflation, weird costume removal)
Part 21 - Link
Everyone gets suited up and they go to the party. (includes costume TF, doppelgangers, a neuter orgy)
Part 22 - Link
The party is crashed by unknown assailants. People are melded to the floor. (includes paint TF, merging)
Part 23 - Link
Norris wakes up in a moving train and has to contend with a dangerous hallway. (inclues clones, fission, micro/macro)
Part 24 - Link
Norris takes advantage of the situation to be as kinked out as he can possibly be. (includes micro/macro, self-pleasure, clones, shrinking)
Part 25 - Link
The procession is attacked by a monster that can possess their bodies! After vanquishing their foe temporarily, the Norrisses escape to a different part of the train and regroup.
(includes possession, transformation, mind control, merging, growth)
Part 26 - Link
The regrouped mystery characters encounter the possessing demon again, and are caught in yet another trap. (includes reverse vehicle TF, organ TF, anal merging)
Part 27 - Link
Norris is acquainted with his captors, and we get to meet the Baudi crew. (includes non-consentual blowjobs/anal sex via the aforementioned merging)
Part 28 - Link
All of the captive Maddragoners are deposited at a mysterious location. They are handed over to a strange eyepatch man. (not super fetishy this chapter)
Part 29 - Link
Everyone's magical items are ruined, and the Phthalo disguises disintegrate. There's an introduction to Crooksville, and Norris is transmuted into a living gumball machine that resembles a pirate. (includes costume transformation, paint TF)
Part 30 - Link
A few years pass. Stuff happens in Crooksville that is of no consequence to the larger story but is pretty kinky. (includes gumball-machine-being, boss/employee romance, random inanimate TF)
Part 31 - Link
Norris is inducted into a brothel for reasons that aren't entirely clear to him, but Yolanda has a claw in it. After fucking a dolphin, Norris finds a door in the brothel that leads down into a secret area. (includes neuter pegging, slow TF)
Part 32 - Link
Norris describes being emptied of gumballs in preparation for some awkward self-surgery, which he needs to escape. Norris is finally rescued! (includes inflation, compression through small spaces)
(that's the end, so far)
The vividness of the imagery is seriously lacking in some of the later chapters—and, let's face it, the whole thing is kind of amateur. The story's long but it's not really cleverly written, I'm afraid!
Part 1 - Link
Introduction to Norris, a human traveller, and Phit, an impish rubber devil, who becomes Norris' possession after winning a carnival game. (includes inflation, polymorphism, rubber, bio male on rubber male sex)
Part 2 - Link
Norris tells Phit about his destination: Maddragon. Phit gabs at Norris about his personal history and how he came to be a rubber devil. (includes clones, more gay sex, living suits)
Part 3 - Link
Norris and Phit arrive at the Maddragon Arms, they meet Yolanda and Phthalo. He's admitted into the Arms and given a room. (includes mild paint TF, subtle mind control, two-headed forms)
Part 4 - Link
Norris accidentally activates a trap. (includes nonconsentual nullification, blanking, neutering)
Part 5 - Link
A mysterious creature seizes Norris and, thinking he's an intruder, proceeds to tease his blanked body. (includes blanking aftermath, orgasm denial, teasing)
Part 6 - Link
Zizz is revealed. Yolanda and Zizz plan on sending Norris on some sort of fun mission to prove himself useful to the Arms. He's fitted with a cock which he is explicitly instructed not to let anyone touch. (includes costume TF, multifurry, living toys, voice removal)
Part 7 - Link
Yolanda gives Norris, disguised as a multi-faced lion named Foo Foo, detailed instructions about releasing a fellow Maddragon resident from captivity in neighboring Baudi. On his way out, he's accompanied by a cute girl who leads him into a trap. (includes female to male TG, merging and equine transformation, inanimate TF)
Part 8 - Link
Norris as Foo Foo is abducted. His captors start to violate his body, which Norris rolls with until he remembers that he can't let anyone touch his cock. He escapes from the carriage and ultimately ends up in Baudi. (incudes male on monster rape situations, orgasm denial, and feline power fantasies)
Part 9 - Link
Foo Foo is given an acid bath by Prissy Valentine, who we meet for the first time. (includes femdom and mostly pain and discomfort)
Part 10 - Link
Norris finds the captive woman, who turns out to be a lycanthropic shapeshifter. He extracts her from her cell using his magical cock. Yes, you heard me. (includes shapeshifting women, CTF)
Part 11 - Link
Lily the wolfgirl is released, and Norris is taken out of the Foo Foo costume. (includes reverse CTF, reverse costume TF)
Part 12 - Link
Phthalo comes to visit for tea and conversation. (includes paint TF, teapot heads, udders)
Part 13 - Link
Phit and Norris explore Maddragon. (includes introspection and nothing really kinky!)
Part 14 - Link
Phthalo and Norris kink out in a painting. (includes paint TF, multiple faces, neuter-focus, monster fetish)
Part 15 - Link
Zizz gives Norris a fox costume to wear, and he puts it on in an unconventional way. (includes costume TF, body confusion)
Part 16 - Link
Zizz and Norris go to visit a pub run by a clown. Clowns have curious undercarriage. (includes clowns wearing codpieces)
Part 17 - Link
Norris discovers what's special about Rocko the bartender. He also gains an extra dick and four arms in an unrelated event. (includes more reality-defying bodies, gay blowjobs, limb growth)
Part 18 - Link
Norris returns with Zizz. There's some gossip in the front room. Phit reappears, frozen. (includes more paint TF, teapot heads, excess limbs, petrification via frozen liquid filling)
Part 19 - Link
Phit thaws out, Zizz and Norris help. (includes polymorphism, de-freezing)
Part 20 - Link
Norris punishes Phit by filling him with water and making him immobile. There's a party for Phthalo where they're all going to dress up as him, so Zizz removes Norris from the fox costume. (includes multiple forms of inflation, weird costume removal)
Part 21 - Link
Everyone gets suited up and they go to the party. (includes costume TF, doppelgangers, a neuter orgy)
Part 22 - Link
The party is crashed by unknown assailants. People are melded to the floor. (includes paint TF, merging)
Part 23 - Link
Norris wakes up in a moving train and has to contend with a dangerous hallway. (inclues clones, fission, micro/macro)
Part 24 - Link
Norris takes advantage of the situation to be as kinked out as he can possibly be. (includes micro/macro, self-pleasure, clones, shrinking)
Part 25 - Link
The procession is attacked by a monster that can possess their bodies! After vanquishing their foe temporarily, the Norrisses escape to a different part of the train and regroup.
(includes possession, transformation, mind control, merging, growth)
Part 26 - Link
The regrouped mystery characters encounter the possessing demon again, and are caught in yet another trap. (includes reverse vehicle TF, organ TF, anal merging)
Part 27 - Link
Norris is acquainted with his captors, and we get to meet the Baudi crew. (includes non-consentual blowjobs/anal sex via the aforementioned merging)
Part 28 - Link
All of the captive Maddragoners are deposited at a mysterious location. They are handed over to a strange eyepatch man. (not super fetishy this chapter)
Part 29 - Link
Everyone's magical items are ruined, and the Phthalo disguises disintegrate. There's an introduction to Crooksville, and Norris is transmuted into a living gumball machine that resembles a pirate. (includes costume transformation, paint TF)
Part 30 - Link
A few years pass. Stuff happens in Crooksville that is of no consequence to the larger story but is pretty kinky. (includes gumball-machine-being, boss/employee romance, random inanimate TF)
Part 31 - Link
Norris is inducted into a brothel for reasons that aren't entirely clear to him, but Yolanda has a claw in it. After fucking a dolphin, Norris finds a door in the brothel that leads down into a secret area. (includes neuter pegging, slow TF)
Part 32 - Link
Norris describes being emptied of gumballs in preparation for some awkward self-surgery, which he needs to escape. Norris is finally rescued! (includes inflation, compression through small spaces)
(that's the end, so far)
The vividness of the imagery is seriously lacking in some of the later chapters—and, let's face it, the whole thing is kind of amateur. The story's long but it's not really cleverly written, I'm afraid!
Can anyone recommend me some kinky TF stories?
Posted 14 years agoBasically what the title says! I'd like to find some writers whose work I haven't seen before. I'm not too picky on the trigger or on the final form, I'm more interested in looking at a variety of transformation descriptions and the kinky potential of the post-transformation relationship.
Maybe to be more specific, I'm looking for stories that have stood out to you as being kind of weird and unusual. There's a definite boilerplate TF story, where if you've read one of them you've read them all. Totally not interested in those. If you've stumbled across something that's stood out from the rest, I want to know about it!
Maybe to be more specific, I'm looking for stories that have stood out to you as being kind of weird and unusual. There's a definite boilerplate TF story, where if you've read one of them you've read them all. Totally not interested in those. If you've stumbled across something that's stood out from the rest, I want to know about it!
Check out this awesome comic!
Posted 14 years ago
marcothecat done did it! It's AMAZING. Oh my gosh, the second page. Golly, I'm so gleeful!Page 1: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5090788
Page 2: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5221559
Getting over the fear
Posted 15 years agoI'm trying to make it a personal policy to not write about the things I'm into at any given moment, as an incentive to produce an interesting drawing rather than some dry prose in a journal. But there are times when it's emotionally impossible for some reason. It can be super nerve-wracking to translate certain ideas into a drawing, especially if it's one of those really embarrassing ones that could potentially change FOREVER the way people look at you. Just seeing it appear on a page or on a screen can fills you with a kind of self-loathing that makes the mind freeze up and go into panic mode.
Sometimes it's the jokes. You anticipate the jokes you're going to get, because you've seen them a billion times over. I think it's because some fetishes are just deemed funnier and more frivolous than others. But the artist doesn't always see it that way.
Most of the time though it's completely inexplicable. Not that you have no idea why it's happening, you can pin the blame specifically on the images of people turning their backs on you because you're into a weird, socially compromising thing. But finding the source of that anxiety forces you into some pretty mucky and ambiguous emotional terrain. That emotional dredging exercise is inevitably an alienating experience that you'd rather not go through, so you don't draw that particular fantasy, and you don't share it. It's much easier to give up than to press forward, and the personal reward for doing so is really not worth the effort. Even so, now there's someone all alone out there who won't get to see your drawing and go "fuck, there's someone else out there who's just like me!" You have to measure out whether it's worth it to you to take a hit for someone else to feel a sense of belonging. Usually, uh, the ego wins.
I have a reputation that precedes me for drawing fucked up shit. Swatcher gets his mad squick on sometimes. I don't actually set out to scare anyone, I don't ever think "man, this isn't terrifying enough" while I'm drawing a thing. But I can't deny that it's there. That said, I've found it pretty useful to have this veneer of horror and insanity. Do you know why? Because while some people will never get over that kind of superficial aspect, their closed-mindedness and judgmental attitude will be kept safely at a distance by the mechanism of their own fear. If it gets to the point where you're not at all frightened or weirded out by anything I draw, it means that you understand my personality extremely well. The reactions I get are a great bellweather for friendships. The people I will never ever be friends put themselves in that position immediately with their "what is this I don't even" and their "lol looks like dr. zeus" comments. The people I become instantly friendly with are the people who don't understand why anyone thinks I'm creepy, haha.
Fear and anxiety are such things to get over! They're so pernicious! Especially when all you want to do is be "normal" because normal people don't have to deal with our problems. We put ourselves through endless humiliating contortions and guilty public admissions and play a bit of a social capital chess game just to relate to other human beings on a sexual level while maintaining our status as sane, well-adjusted beings. I can't help but feel like an alien all the time when I'm physically and chemically uninterested in that conventional view of sexuality presented in every fucking Hollywood movie. Like if the universe were democratic in the way it thinks it is, we would be the weird, aberrant ones. You know, we're "perverts", we're "deviants", we have "alternative sexualities", we "fetishize", as if all of sexuality weren't about some weird biochemical process we have little control over. But in a solipsistic universe, which is the universe we kind of experience as individuals whether we like it or not, everyone else is a fucked up pervert and we're the normal ones.
But I digress, this is already getting long and rambly. Presenting frightening situations is a great way of pushing away the people who will never understand you, because all the people who are even just curious about what kind of person you are will automatically be so much less of a headache to deal with. Pushing the envelope over what's permissible with whatever fetish you have keeps the game REALLY interesting for everyone else with that fetish, too.
Okay cool, now with that pep talk out of the way I feel pumped to draw all sorts of alienating shit that will make you all unwatch me. :)
Sometimes it's the jokes. You anticipate the jokes you're going to get, because you've seen them a billion times over. I think it's because some fetishes are just deemed funnier and more frivolous than others. But the artist doesn't always see it that way.
Most of the time though it's completely inexplicable. Not that you have no idea why it's happening, you can pin the blame specifically on the images of people turning their backs on you because you're into a weird, socially compromising thing. But finding the source of that anxiety forces you into some pretty mucky and ambiguous emotional terrain. That emotional dredging exercise is inevitably an alienating experience that you'd rather not go through, so you don't draw that particular fantasy, and you don't share it. It's much easier to give up than to press forward, and the personal reward for doing so is really not worth the effort. Even so, now there's someone all alone out there who won't get to see your drawing and go "fuck, there's someone else out there who's just like me!" You have to measure out whether it's worth it to you to take a hit for someone else to feel a sense of belonging. Usually, uh, the ego wins.
I have a reputation that precedes me for drawing fucked up shit. Swatcher gets his mad squick on sometimes. I don't actually set out to scare anyone, I don't ever think "man, this isn't terrifying enough" while I'm drawing a thing. But I can't deny that it's there. That said, I've found it pretty useful to have this veneer of horror and insanity. Do you know why? Because while some people will never get over that kind of superficial aspect, their closed-mindedness and judgmental attitude will be kept safely at a distance by the mechanism of their own fear. If it gets to the point where you're not at all frightened or weirded out by anything I draw, it means that you understand my personality extremely well. The reactions I get are a great bellweather for friendships. The people I will never ever be friends put themselves in that position immediately with their "what is this I don't even" and their "lol looks like dr. zeus" comments. The people I become instantly friendly with are the people who don't understand why anyone thinks I'm creepy, haha.
Fear and anxiety are such things to get over! They're so pernicious! Especially when all you want to do is be "normal" because normal people don't have to deal with our problems. We put ourselves through endless humiliating contortions and guilty public admissions and play a bit of a social capital chess game just to relate to other human beings on a sexual level while maintaining our status as sane, well-adjusted beings. I can't help but feel like an alien all the time when I'm physically and chemically uninterested in that conventional view of sexuality presented in every fucking Hollywood movie. Like if the universe were democratic in the way it thinks it is, we would be the weird, aberrant ones. You know, we're "perverts", we're "deviants", we have "alternative sexualities", we "fetishize", as if all of sexuality weren't about some weird biochemical process we have little control over. But in a solipsistic universe, which is the universe we kind of experience as individuals whether we like it or not, everyone else is a fucked up pervert and we're the normal ones.
But I digress, this is already getting long and rambly. Presenting frightening situations is a great way of pushing away the people who will never understand you, because all the people who are even just curious about what kind of person you are will automatically be so much less of a headache to deal with. Pushing the envelope over what's permissible with whatever fetish you have keeps the game REALLY interesting for everyone else with that fetish, too.
Okay cool, now with that pep talk out of the way I feel pumped to draw all sorts of alienating shit that will make you all unwatch me. :)
The critic and the fandom
Posted 15 years agoI was replying to this post but kept it short, there's a lot more that could be said, but it's definitely off on a tangent and I didn't want to derail the uh, thread of the conversation, if you can call it that.
The fandom, like the rest of pop culture, kind of lags behind the somewhat introspective, academic meta-analyses of its own heuristics in the search for what is Good and what is Bad. Art and art criticism (and here I'm including literary criticism) has classically been dominated by a paradigm of highbrow and lowbrow, where the former is to be analyzed and the latter is to be mined for meaning and never privileged over the former. The role of the critic is to determine a progressive path for culture, pruning the unruly and inconsequential media and shining a light on the matriculated and overworked works, canonizing them. The critic decides what is cliché and what is creative, and ultimately what gets to live on in perpetuity and what gets dumped by the curbside of history.
I've been in the fandom too long to believe that a good vs. bad paradigm is a worthwhile path to follow. I've been moved by silly, frivolous sketches, arguably sexy youtube videos, inconsequential and undocumented costumed jaunts in public, and I don't believe for a second that anyone knows anybody well enough to make the decision of what's good and bad art for either my personal consumption nor anyone else's. In fact, the fandom's capacity for intensely powerful but private encounters with art makes any sort of gatekeeper or tastemaker a hinderance to the overal art-making subculture, rather than a blessing. I have to wonder what these self-imposed critics are hoping to accomplish, sometimes.
We furries definitely see amateur behavior as a problem to be solved, and as a fandom we look to popular mass media for our standards of excellence. That implies a certain fetishization of slickness and professionalism (as opposed to a rough, counter-cultural aesthetic) which has, as its ultimate goal, legitimacy and acceptance of our weirdo interests in our respective larger cultures. A furry being design lead on a cartoon TV show, for instance, would describe someone who "made it", and thus the goal of every furry artist is to draw like something that would appear in a mass medium in the hopes of maybe capturing some of that attention. Clean lines, correct anatomy, copic markers and gouache and colored pencil on illustration board.
I remember when I first started out as a furry artist, I was terrible. Really just terrible. And now, even though I feel as though I've expanded my visual repertoire, I don't know if the ideas I put forth in my furry art are any more relevant to culture than they used to be. I've never seen relevance or quality as a goal in my art, nor do I impose those standards on others. Quite the opposite: I get pretty noisy when people turn to mockery out of a devotion to some methodology designed to Make Furry Art Good. Like, why do we even want that to begin with?
It's not that I don't have preferences. I was talking with a friend recently about what gets me going in TF art, what aspects turn me on. And personally, the easier it is for me to imagine a transformation happening to me IRL, the more it accomplishes that goal. As a result, I much prefer correct anatomy, realistic shading and textures, a coherent storyline and setting, and a male victim that closely resembles myself. My own scrawlings (I hope) support my standards. But they aren't universal standards, nor is it my job to make them universal standards. There just a shit-ton of art that I'm more ambivalent toward as a personal preference. I've loved the fuck out of art that was made by people who have never gone to art school, have never taken a figure drawing lesson. If their idea was to make me happy, or make me connect with them on a scenario they think is hot or whatever, then mission accomplished.
Critique is often confused with criticism. Criticism has a few heuristics which mainly involve pointing out what's wrong and offering a tried and true solution, usually to study from life, or to thicken certain lines, or other gems sucked out of "how to draw" books and high school art classes. Critique is much harder and involves understanding the place of a thing within its intended context. The goal of critique, as far as I've come to understand it, isn't to decide what's good and what's bad, but something much cooler and more interesting: to understand what the fuck we're doing and why we're doing it and why other people aren't doing it. In other words, as critics (because we're all in the capacity to be critics) aught not to decide what's fit for mass culture and what isn't, but to take for granted that we're a part of a worldwide mix of cultures and what our relationship with that is.
The potential of transcending the offhand judgement of furry art's worth based on technical aspects is really exciting to me. I'd rather understand what I'm doing before I decide whether it's good or not.
The fandom, like the rest of pop culture, kind of lags behind the somewhat introspective, academic meta-analyses of its own heuristics in the search for what is Good and what is Bad. Art and art criticism (and here I'm including literary criticism) has classically been dominated by a paradigm of highbrow and lowbrow, where the former is to be analyzed and the latter is to be mined for meaning and never privileged over the former. The role of the critic is to determine a progressive path for culture, pruning the unruly and inconsequential media and shining a light on the matriculated and overworked works, canonizing them. The critic decides what is cliché and what is creative, and ultimately what gets to live on in perpetuity and what gets dumped by the curbside of history.
I've been in the fandom too long to believe that a good vs. bad paradigm is a worthwhile path to follow. I've been moved by silly, frivolous sketches, arguably sexy youtube videos, inconsequential and undocumented costumed jaunts in public, and I don't believe for a second that anyone knows anybody well enough to make the decision of what's good and bad art for either my personal consumption nor anyone else's. In fact, the fandom's capacity for intensely powerful but private encounters with art makes any sort of gatekeeper or tastemaker a hinderance to the overal art-making subculture, rather than a blessing. I have to wonder what these self-imposed critics are hoping to accomplish, sometimes.
We furries definitely see amateur behavior as a problem to be solved, and as a fandom we look to popular mass media for our standards of excellence. That implies a certain fetishization of slickness and professionalism (as opposed to a rough, counter-cultural aesthetic) which has, as its ultimate goal, legitimacy and acceptance of our weirdo interests in our respective larger cultures. A furry being design lead on a cartoon TV show, for instance, would describe someone who "made it", and thus the goal of every furry artist is to draw like something that would appear in a mass medium in the hopes of maybe capturing some of that attention. Clean lines, correct anatomy, copic markers and gouache and colored pencil on illustration board.
I remember when I first started out as a furry artist, I was terrible. Really just terrible. And now, even though I feel as though I've expanded my visual repertoire, I don't know if the ideas I put forth in my furry art are any more relevant to culture than they used to be. I've never seen relevance or quality as a goal in my art, nor do I impose those standards on others. Quite the opposite: I get pretty noisy when people turn to mockery out of a devotion to some methodology designed to Make Furry Art Good. Like, why do we even want that to begin with?
It's not that I don't have preferences. I was talking with a friend recently about what gets me going in TF art, what aspects turn me on. And personally, the easier it is for me to imagine a transformation happening to me IRL, the more it accomplishes that goal. As a result, I much prefer correct anatomy, realistic shading and textures, a coherent storyline and setting, and a male victim that closely resembles myself. My own scrawlings (I hope) support my standards. But they aren't universal standards, nor is it my job to make them universal standards. There just a shit-ton of art that I'm more ambivalent toward as a personal preference. I've loved the fuck out of art that was made by people who have never gone to art school, have never taken a figure drawing lesson. If their idea was to make me happy, or make me connect with them on a scenario they think is hot or whatever, then mission accomplished.
Critique is often confused with criticism. Criticism has a few heuristics which mainly involve pointing out what's wrong and offering a tried and true solution, usually to study from life, or to thicken certain lines, or other gems sucked out of "how to draw" books and high school art classes. Critique is much harder and involves understanding the place of a thing within its intended context. The goal of critique, as far as I've come to understand it, isn't to decide what's good and what's bad, but something much cooler and more interesting: to understand what the fuck we're doing and why we're doing it and why other people aren't doing it. In other words, as critics (because we're all in the capacity to be critics) aught not to decide what's fit for mass culture and what isn't, but to take for granted that we're a part of a worldwide mix of cultures and what our relationship with that is.
The potential of transcending the offhand judgement of furry art's worth based on technical aspects is really exciting to me. I'd rather understand what I'm doing before I decide whether it's good or not.
