So I don't tend to talk about my IRL troubles in this journal but in this case it definitely pertains to y'all on account of me most likely not being able to attend AC this year. I really want to go, but as of yet it seems extremely unlikely. You know, you practically have to decide NOW if you're going to go, and right now there are just too many unknowns.

I'm going to be done college at the end of April, and I'm planning on moving to Montreal in short order. Montreal represents a delightful mix of low rent, decent artist grants, bilingualism, and a variety of other perks and non-obstacles, such as delicious bagels. Regardless of whether I change cities though, I'm going to have to come up with my first and last month's rent, plus some money to throw at some friends so that I can sleep on their couch while I search for a job.

I'm currently unemployed, besides the commissions which have been keeping me pretty content. I can afford a coffee whenever I feel like having one, for instance. But I'm looking to make at least two grand before the end of summer. You'll be lucky in Toronto to find a place that costs less than $1000 a month. In Montreal? Most places cost south of that. So that's kind of my budget.

I'm giving myself about a six month window in which to raise the money. In May, I'll be attending one of my oldest friend's wedding in Montreal, which is going to cost a bit as well. I've got to get a nice suit, stay in a hotel, all that stuff. So I'm not going to be able to fit any cons or similar major purchases into my schedule unless I happen across a significant windfall.

My first priority right now is to find a job. Minimum wage is kind of the idea here. At minimum wage, working just weekends, I'd be making about $560 a month, and with current living expenses balanced out by occasional income (like commissions) I'll be able to put aside maybe $300-$400 a month. It will be tight, but if I can get the ball rolling right now, I can make my goal of $2000 by August even in this sort of worst case scenario of not getting any weekday shifts. If I get four shifts a week, that makes about $1300 a month minimum wage, which means I won't be living in austerity until I move. Taking that into account, I can put (pipe dream!) $1000 aside every month and be done in two months. That leaves a lot of money left over for play until that happens!

If I can go to AC or any other con depends entirely on paying off these other priorities. Yikes!

This is slightly modified from this journal that  van-weasel did! Go check it out! It's fun. :)

Here though, you have a chance to go out on a date with one of my characters! What would you do with them? What do you have planned?

For reference:

Swatcher

Phthalo

Bookeraux

That bizarre teapot

Some fox weirdo

Once you reply, I'll let you know how the night went. :)

Holy crap, what a milestone!  Dekks_Shepperd picked up the honor like it was no big deal. Now I want to roll you all up in my Katamari. I want to get you all in a room and turn us all into plastic foxes and have a party. I want you all to be in my closet so's I can wear a different one of you every day for five and a half years. I want to put you all in a giant blender and pour you all into a mould, making you all into THE BEST WATCHER IN THE WORLD—I'll rocket to the bottom of FA Rank, but it will be worth it. I want to scribble your names all over my belly and take a photo of myself like that wearing a rubber mask. I want to sing your praises. I want to fuck you like an animal, I want to feel you from the inside. I want a new drug. I want to be the most popular girl. I want to be part of that world. I want you all to know how awesome you guys are, how much I appreciate that you're keeping an eye on me.

Next stop, 3,000. :)

I've never really considered myself a Darren Aronofsky fan. I'd seen parts of Pi, I've seen The Fountain, both of which were very intense, and very expressive. On the recommendation of  mendes who came to visit over New Years, we went to see Black Swan, Aronofsky's latest venture. "It has transformation in it" was all I needed to hear, haha.

If you imagine a comfy chair (go on, do it), and you can picture the plush upholstery, you can imagine a chair of practically any shape that would be just as comfortable. I don't want to give too much away, but often when we TF people try to make a story that's not a "typical" transformation story (i.e. it's not just another self-insertion fantasy) it's just taking an already comfy chair and moulding it into a different form. However, the transformational content of Black Swan really does succeed in reinventing transformation in film. It's body horror, sure, but that's maybe not the full picture.

I think this is really where we as fans, fetishists, and content creators separate from the mainstream of culture. We're willing to do lip service to metaphor as long as the content presses some emotional or sensual button, which is obviously a kind of limiting perspective because it prevents us from accessing all sorts of metaphors and symbols inherent in the genre. Transformation stories have been around for a while, and have run the gamut from the Homeric horror of Circe to the transcendentally kitchy Teen Wolf, there's no denying that our circle of TF writers isn't all that adventuresome. You know, true novelty in art requires a bit of detachment from the familiar, especially at this point in history when we find ourselves dissatisfied with the lowbrow cult of postmodernism. To use transformation in a truly free and expressive way, we'd have to not only be repulsed by the familiar and cozy and controlled transformation that we're accustomed to, we'd also have to dedicate ourselves intellectually to a semiotically different understanding of changing shape.

Now we're a keen-eyed bunch, enough to tell that there are certain tropes and clichés in TF fiction produced by our particular community. We see them and we call them our pet peeves, but I wonder if there isn't something more subtle going on there. Why would you want to create "not your typical TF story"? What does "typical" in this sense mean? This is definitely a source of angst within the authorial side of transformation fandom. "Transformation porn", even if there's no adult situations involved, is basically the status quo: a description of a metamorphosis, how it makes us feel, the compromising situations it puts us in. Pressing buttons. See, every now and then we all feel like that's a rut that we need to break out of. But is that something we actually want? After seeing Aronofsky's take on Swan Lake, I'm really skeptical that we should go that route. Our hearts probably aren't in the right place.

First of all I guess I'll start with personal stuff!

AC 2010 was my first furry convention, and probably for good reason. I don't think I would have been able to have as good a time. There was a time when I really didn't like that aspect of the fandom. I had a FANTASTIC time there, everyone I met there was great! Also, AC 2010 was my first time fursuiting.

2010 has been a pretty confusing year, but it's all in all been pretty business. I have a lot of RL shit to take care of, and 2011 is going to take that to the next level. I already know I'm going to be a part of at least three art shows with non-fandom related artwork. I'll also have to save up, because I'm hoping to be moving to Montreal, Quebec sometime in the late spring.

I'm not making too many new years resolutions other than a few simple commitments in order of importance: graduate, get a part time job with an income I can supplement with commissions, move out, and set up a work studio. I have a few vague plans like make a fursuit, make a Swatcher puppet, finish the costumes I've started, but those are on the backburner until I'm comfortably settled in my own pad.

I've had a major thing for bulging round bodies this year!

Stats:

188 total submissions, and 45.21% (85) of them were commissioned and 46.8% (88) were not scraps. I didn't post any stories to FA last year, but I did start posting old stories to shifti, and I also posted parts 31 and 32 to the onemoon_stories LJ community, which is one up from the lowly single part 30 that I posted last year.

Last year had 142 total submissions. I didn't do a single commission last year, and 76.76% (109) of my submissions were to scraps. However, I did post four story submissions to FA, a score I'd love to beat in 2011.

I'm currently #1346 on FA Rank.

2011 is going to be my sixth year on FA!

I guess the rest of this would be a kind of state-of-the-fandom thing?

2010 seems to be a good year for the transformation community. Not only did Transfur change their policies to be more permissive, they also revamped their site and it looks great! I'm nothing but happy with Transfur, which is a weird thing to say about a site on the internet. All I can say is that the comments section there is kind of youtubey, but hey, that will change when more people join up. Tanuke.com is rolling along, and while I'm not 100% on board with some of their, uh, editorial decisions, I can't argue with a furry-focused TF news blog.

2010 has not been a great year for FA as a site, but a great year for FA as a community, at least as far as I'm concerned. So many cool people joined this year! I'd list them, but the list is so long I'd invariably leave someone out and it'd be embarrassing! So I'll just say I <3 U all (with mouth)!

Um, I dunno what else to say! I haven't really been paying close attention to fandom politics. It's kind of so huge and splintered that it's impossible to keep track of everything that's going on! Also, I'm not really in the business of dwelling on whatever negative thing is killing the fandom this time. Everything has actually been pretty encouraging. Furry is growing, it's getting new blood, the gender balance is starting to even out, the sorta trolly 4channy bullshit is falling out of fashion as people grow up (or at least it's getting easier to ignore), and as a result it's a breeze to have a good time without people pissing on your parade because they think it's funny. Though, we'll have to see how things go in 2011, it's too early to put a stamp on anything, the mood of the whole internet seems to be changing for the better. Which is more than I can say for the grossness of IRL in 2010. Yikes. :(

Happy 2011 everyone! Only two more years until the end of the world!

I'm not leaving FA. I was considering it, though. There's no use making a big stink about it. This website is still free to use, there's a bunch of people here that I like, and AFAIK none of us is guilty by association, so. Here we are.

I didn't mention this when I first posted this journal but what the fuck is up with all the misogyny directed toward women who have been sexually abused? Like, it's really clear whenever a clearly abusive and manipulative situation occurs between a man and a woman, hardly anyone wants to sympathize with the woman. That's psycho! What a nightmare. We aught to be past that point in our modern age. Oh well, gotta keep on truckin' with the feminism.

I apologize for the slight delay in getting this queue of commissions done. The holidays are turning out to be more emotionally and creatively draining than I was expecting. I was looking forward to a good long and productive break, but it's been nothing but depressing. I'm so lonely, nobody understands me, blah blah blah. Winter. I don't have much to show for my time, I've been making tentative steps in so many different directions. Looming large ahead of me is the prospect of graduation and what comes after when you've spent thousands of dollars on a Bachelor of Fuck All. The practicality of making money off of art is something that all of us artists struggle with. Furry commissions sell my time for cheap only because I enjoy the subject matter. It don't pay the bills. And I don't always want to be drawing furry art. I may be getting an Etsy store after the holidays, who knows. But I think I'm just going to have to continue hunting down a part-time job that works with my schedule. It's all up in the air right now and I feel spread really thin. Regardless, due commissions (and trades) will be complete in a timely manner, I promise.

Inexorably, despite the unwatches I've gotten lately, I'm inching closer to the big 2,000. That's super cool for someone who's so niche. Almost 2,000 people are going to be specially notified when I make this journal! Yikes, I'm so sorry.

It seems wrong to make a journal that's nothing but grumbling, so how about some creative stuff?

A while ago, I mentioned a secret project which I've been slowly plugging away at. Some names to whet your appetite: Cloud Wall, Bottle, Nest, Freedrick, Rude Jeremiah, Little Onemoon, Melody, Songbird Island, Breegs, Vicar’s Corner, Town, Retana and Milaby.

I bought a mask not long ago. I can't wait to mess around with it. :)

Um, really into green-skinned things right now. It's a very attractive color to have for skin, I think!

OH! Also, I'm going to make a reminder journal on the 23rd, but on the 24th I'm going to be doing that movie thing. The theme is White Christmas, and I'll be showing the Christmas Shoes movie as well as Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage. BEWARE.

I had a feeling when I submitted the Genitals pictures that quite a few folks would be reaching for that -watch button on my profile page. LOOKS LIKE I WAS RIGHT. 3 unwatches in two days, so far.

EDIT: And now three more for ~mysterious reasons~. 'tis the season for abjuration, I guess!

EDIT #2: Oh I should mention that I'm not all that offended or surprised! I've never paid attention to the daily fluctuations of my number of watchers until now. It's kind of an intriguing phenomenon!

I always thought man it is stupid that gore porn needs a special Japanese name. But I guess it's not just gore? Apparently it's short for guro-tesque. Ero guro. Erotic grotesque. And so yeah, curious about this, I was checking out gurochan's /f/ section today and thinking HMM, this looks familiar! it's too bad they don't allow furry stuff, personally. It's also kind of a pretty heterosexist environment but whatever.

But yeah! I really dig the idea of being simultaneously unsettling and sexy. It's so... indulgent, somehow. Not only is there something seriously hot about being edited, formed, or generally transformed to fit a specific purpose, there's also something really tantalizing about being a bit of a freakshow that I'm having a hard time articulating. It's partly that having such a fresh, unique body requires some exploration. Partly it's that the sorts of body mutations that I like, the non-analogous transformations and semi-transformed bodies and mismatched proportions, all happen in a context where they're more or less a socially sanctioned lifestyle change.

That last part is kind of important and goes ignored in a lot of TF art, erotic or otherwise. A lot of these illustrated situations—admittedly my stuff frequently falls into this category for some people—are unenjoyable and creepy if you imagine it happening in an exact copy of the real world where things are likely to go down a really awkward and frustrating path. For example: if I turned into a giant dick tomorrow (you can make your own jokes here, folks), who would find me? Would I just be lying on the floor until the landlord comes over to pick up the bills? Will they take me to the hospital? Without a digestive tract, I would starve to death! All these questions are very literal and veer quickly into missing the point, since obviously we don't live in a world where people spontaneously turn into giant dicks and so we have some measure of control over the situation!

If we were living in a world where people turned into dicks as a matter of course, even if it was extremely rare, you'd imagine the infrastructure would be very different. And even if it was normal, being turned into someone's cock all of a sudden would be pretty jarring! So you know, if some witch is there, she wants a cock, you happen to be hitting on her, BAM, I guess suddenly magic is real and as a result of this situation we know we're living in a magical world where it's possible to be turned into a witch's triumphant penis. You know, plus it's a fantasy, so whatever, it doesn't need to make sense.

A lot of TF seems to be based around a lifestyle change as much as a body change. In fact, I don't think you can have one without the other. As much as having an unfamiliar body shape, you're also dealing with an unfamiliar social situation. Like, say, you grew a muzzle and a pair of eyes right now between your legs where your private parts used to be, and it started talking to you. How could you shut this flapping mouth up in public? What if it started howling in the middle of the mall? You could put a gag on it, or run to the washroom and stuff a sock in its teeth. See? I've already got an image in my head of how it would go down, with some pretty kinky solutions to some of the problems. Just as easily, I could have everyone suddenly turned on by this crotch mouth and there's a big crotch makeout session right in the middle of the mall and people are walking by like it's nothing. Also, even if you hide it from the public, it would still be really fucking awesome to have a crotch-level mouth during sex. Plus plus, if the conversations were interesting, it would be nice to have the company. It doesn't automatically need to lead in this really dark and depressing direction.

The hardest part for me trying to communicate this fetish is drawing the line between something that's HOT and grotesque and something that's GROSS and grotesque. They're really hard to tell apart. Even I sometimes get confused and get turned on by something like... a furry with their mouth and ass reversed, and they're pooing out of their face into a toilet. I mean that's not really a super erotic situation to draw, but it's a little slice of life from a really fucking out there lifestyle you'd have to adopt if ever you had a butthole mouth. If you're tempted to find poop more funny than upsetting, the sheer indignity of mouthpooping loses most of its squickiness and instead just stands in for what would be a really self-alienating and "what the fuck do I think I'm doing, even" moment, which is kind of at the heart of TF. Therefore it becomes a really hot picture, even though I'm nonplussed by scat as a fetish. In fact, I'm sure there's a lot of ways you can draw this particular image that would repulse me. What that means is there's something that's turning me on other than the specific scenario, something more about the general weirdness of it. I don't know what that is though. What the hell, sexual preferences!

I guess I wrote a fucking essay about this regardless of not wanting to. Maybe I did want to. Fuck. Anyway, nobody really explains this stuff. WTF is a question, after all, to which there's definitely an answer. The answer is evidently really difficult to summarize! I know a lot of you are not going to sympathize here, but yeah, there we go.

ABOUT THIS ROUND: New round of commissions, and a new look for this journal. I've posted prices for icons and con badges, and I have a new Google form for keeping track of commissions, instead of using notes. I hope this will be a more effective way of handling requests.

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Hey, you're here because you'd like to commission yourself turning into something, and other art of that nature. It's a pretty painless three-step process, here, let me tell you all about it.

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HOW I PRICE:

I charge a base price for all commissions, plus a few extra bux here and there for details that are more time-consuming. This helps me keep the prices generally low for the no-frills people among us. :)

A TF sequence requiring two references as a series of three images done in a B&W lineart sketch format with no background would cost:

$20 for the first page
$25 ($20+$5) for each of the two following pages
$10 for the second reference
TOTAL: $80 for a three page B&W lineart sequence

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Icons: $15
EXAMPLE: (no examples yet)
Static, color icons, provided in large (1280x1280) and FA-sized (100x100) sizes.

Doodles: $10
Simple scenarios drawn quickly! ONLY AVAILABLE DURING STREAMS.
EXAMPLE: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2705498/

Cleaned up B&W lineart sketch: $20
+ each additional character to be drawn from reference: $10
+ a detailed background: $10
+ MAKE IT A SEQUENCE: Base price +$5 per page (for planning and continuity).
EXAMPLE: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5793476

Color/basic lighting Sketch commission (one character) with a decorative or solid color background: $30
A quick digital painting with flat colors.
+ each additional character to be drawn from reference: $15
+ a detailed background: $15
+ MAKE IT A SEQUENCE: $5 per page (for planning and continuity)
EXAMPLE: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4830711

Con badges: $40
Color, basic lighting, text elements. I will give priority to con badges but please allow time for me to complete them.
EXAMPLE: (no examples yet)

Detailed character refs with a neutral or textured background: $50
Character from multiple angles, multiple expressions, with cutaways to details if desired. Great if you want a Swatchery character!
EXAMPLE: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4205179/

Full color, full background, all-out "conceptual" commissions: $225
Basically a digital painting. Generally anything goes with the $225 commissions, I'll let you know if there's anything I don't feel comfortable drawing, but there's not much.
EXAMPLE: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4576610/

GREAT DEAL: Morph sequences! $90
Lots of attention to detail paid to any body part you choose.
+ each additional character to be drawn from reference: $15
EXAMPLE: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5732554
(note: these will be drawn freehand for the time being!)

A package deal for sequences. Either three panels of transformation focusing on any part of the body plus a larger panel for context, or three full body transformation panels.

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Second, there are some rules that I would like to have posted in a public manner like such:

Please read use the commission request form to request commissions.

It's never happened before but it bears saying... this form is not a means to force Swatcher to draw what you want, and by reading this you're aware of that fact. Naturally, Swatcher would rather modify your request and will probably talk to you about it, but should the need arise, Swatcher reserves the right to refuse, suspend, cancel or reorder commissions without warning.

If you would like to commission anything of an adult nature, you are required to be over the age of 18 or be of legal age of contract where you currently reside. By requesting an adult commission, Swatcher must take it as implicit that you are being truthful in fulfilling that single requirement, and Swatcher cannot be held responsible for any misleading information you present.

Payment to Swatcher is to be made upon completion. Large format digital images will be e-mailed attached to the payment receipt e-mail, unless otherwise specified.


Finally, fill out my COMMISSION REQUEST FORM. I will not keep track of commissions unless they are submitted via this method, and so I cannot accept commissions unless they are submitted via this method. You can introduce an idea via a note or a comment or something, but unless you officially fill out the form, the commission's just not going to happen. I hope that this will actually simplify the process, so let me know if you find anything confusing or misleading.

Thank you! I hope you enjoy your art!

Hey folks, so even though it's not officially how long I've had this FA account for, December 4th, 2005 is the date I apparently joined FurAffinity and kind of came out as a FUR REALS furry artist. So like, it's pretty significant to me or something, and I don't want to make a huge deal out of it but I thought I'd do something fun.

So Foxxy (formerly Foxx?) does this podcast/audio/whatever thing which has a bit of an interview format. They focus on a handful of images from the past however long and chat about the making and the thought process behind them. It's pretty self-indulgent, but so is celebrating a five year anniversary on a furry website.

Here's one, for an example. http://foxx.tf-media.net/phase14/au.....20-%20Full.mp3

I really like the off-the-cuff conversational format, but I want to make this more of a Thing. So I'm putting out a call here. I'm going to do five conversations with five different people about five different pictures over the five years I've been posting. I'm gonna spend the next few weeks putting this together and release it on the 4th.

What I need from all of you are people interested in chatting! Over Skype, naturally. Basically, just kind of choose a thing I've drawn that you'd like us to talk off the cuff about for ten to 15 minutes. Scraps is legit as well as the main gallery. Then I guess I'll pick a bunch of them from the comments and then figure out a good time for us to do some recordings. The idea isn't to be exhaustive, it's just a way to chat with friends, fans, and fellow artists about whatever.

So yeah. Let's do this!

Hey peeps!

Five slots this weekend!

1-  flir
2-  raelbny
3-  Gullible
4-  Hayatoru
5-  nightPhaser

Same deal as usual.

$30 base price gets you simple color and shading, or color and complex lineart, whatever is most applicable to the picture I guess.

+$10 for every extra character you involve above one. Involving any of my characters is free, although occasionally problematic.

EXAMPLE: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4796665

Please keep the requests simple! "Draw my character turning into X, I really like Y and Z aspects, try to emphasize those" or "I'd really like to see my character having A happen to them in setting B" are good simple requests.

Comment below to reserve a slot. When you're on the list, note me with your request details and references. I'll send you my paypal address. I accept tips, so if you'd like to throw in a little bit extra, I wouldn't say no. :)

I'll be streaming sometime this afternoon on Watchtail. Look for an announcement!

The really annoying thing about having weird tastes in media, especially weird transformation-related subject matter, is that for the most part, I kind of end up responsible for making it exist. Lots of things in this world give me joy, natch, but nothing gives me quite so much joy as getting my xenophilic transformation buttons pushed. I wonder how life would be if this silly social-capital destroying passion of mine were something a little less niche than quasi-erotic body shape and identity alteration. Like, what if I got my rocks off on gangbang videos and was a huge fan of Family Guy?

Well, I could live my life without ever having my sanity or soberness be in question, for one. That would be nice.

On a similar note, when you've kind of seen every video that relates to your interests on youtube, when fchan provides no more surprises, when you're down to a desperate "I want to see this, so I guess I'd better draw it because fuck me if anyone else is going to", it makes anyone who shares your interests—and also draws—a much more precious commodity because they will understand the problem in a way that so few people can. As much a transformation fan as I am, and as much as I dig morphwise human-to-animal TF, anyone who draws unconventional transformation situations outside of that field kind of becomes someone I really want to know.

This is something I'm sure a lot of us can relate to: because there aren't that many of us, whenever one of us finds another one of us, it makes all of us feel less lonely and also less silly for feeling so lonely. Everyone is kind of a freak in their own way, or they're made to feel like a freak just for being the way they are, but there's something to be said for sympathy from someone who's the same color of freak that you are. That's how communities form, natch.

So when I complain that nobody ever draws X, I'm not trying to make it a passive-aggressive request. And don't say that other people have worse problems, as if I don't know. And if it sounds like I'm sighing when I say "Yeah, I've seen it" after you link me to a youtube video, it's nothing personal. It's an existential sigh. Being a xenophile TF fan is a bit of a job sometimes, and a tiny dose of sympathy is sometimes just what the doctor ordered. And by a tiny dose of sympathy, all I mean is the opposite of what I usually get: people giving me unsolicited advice and making me feel even stupider about my unreasonably troubling first world problems. Even though you might not be into TF, I'm sure you can dig it.

I think people underestimate the type of friendships that can blossom only through mutual admiration, inspiration and understanding. Friends who really grok where you're coming from and where you're going. To these friends of mine, those who know that I come to them for sympathy and not advice, thanks. You are great. That's all I have to say about that.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Have a ghoulishly good time! I'm trying to spread out my Halloween all weekend. Needless to say the voyage from Saturday to Sunday is going to be a weird one.

What are your plans? Do they involve murrs? Let me know!

http://monsterfucker.tumblr.com/

Yeah, pretty much agreed on all of these. :D

You know, I feel kind of insecure about this whole furry art thing. I don't know why, but you've been seeing evidence of it in my last few journals. I think it's just something all artists get in response to whatever art community they're in every now and again. I wonder, you know, why am I doing this? I mean, my friends, naturally, like my stuff. And I love drawing for them, even if it's just the subject matter they like that I'm drawing with them in mind. I have a good small group of friends, fans and acquaintances here on FA, and I've even been pulling in a little extra money with my skills. It's fun, it gives me an opportunity to give back to the TF community that is really just endlessly entertaining for me. All good reasons.

But I mean, like, this is probably the least appealing thing I could be doing. Not only am I a furry, I'm a furry fetishist, and one that draws really off-the-wall stuff that people only seem to be able to enjoy on a kind of surreal level. Which is legit, but I'm kind of realizing that the stuff I draw isn't really worth as much as I thought, on the whole giving-back-the-hotness level. It's not really good at what it's supposed to do, which is turning people on. All I seem to ever do is squick people, something I don't like at all, and people are never ashamed to show off how fucked up I am.

On the flipside I've been doing non-furry art and nobody ever tells me that it's fucked up, or that I'm crazy. Nobody ever makes strawman arguments in my vicinity using strawmen that resemble me. People kind of "get" me outside of furry and accept me for who I am, fetishes and all. People treat me like the person I am. And it makes me feel really good.

Isn't that kind of the opposite of what everyone says the fandom is like, though? Like, it's one big hugbox and everyone is just so afraid of angering anyone that nobody says anything that might possibly be construed as hurtful, and that this is a good justification for trolling and lulz? I dunno. Lately I've been feeling, I dunno, especially on the margins of everything, where actually getting and maintaining the kind of friendships and relationships I'm looking for in the fandom has become increasingly difficult. Making art outside the fandom, even art with furry themes, is just so much more fulfilling... except in the cases where I can get across what I'm really feeling, even about the stupid stuff that my libido is coming up with, and I don't need to explain myself and people just kind of get it and RELATE. It's so gratifying to just be understood. I can get that in furry.

But it's rare. The nice thing about the internet is that it makes it much easier to find the one or two people who understand you completely. The bad thing is that once you've mapped that territory, and you make yourself visible, it becomes much easier for the hundreds of people who don't get you and never will to swoop in and make you feel the loneliest you've ever felt.

I've been extremely lucky all my life. I have a good home, a good family, great friends, and only one serious issue: I'm crippled by anxiety. I let all my opportunities slip through my fingers. Being on FA is a good thing if you want your insecurities played like a harp. Even innocently joking comments turn really hurtful. And it really just makes me want to stop, it makes me stop loving what I'm doing.

I keep wanting to reframe furry art in a different context where it makes more sense, where art isn't valued by how much people like it, or how technically good it is. I hate the feeling that this thing I do, that means a lot to me, that gets me excited about life, is completely incomprehensible to anyone else, that I'm just too fucked up to ever be able to function in a society. It piggybacks on all the other problems in my life, all the nagging thoughts, the worries that my room isn't as tidy as I aught to be, that I procrastinate on serious issues, that I have no career ambition or courage in forming relationships. That's like, suicide-provoking shit, yo. I know not everyone can relate to the subject matter of furry porn in the same way that a furry fetish dude would. That's natural, that's biological. But, you know, I feel like people could relate to furry art as just like, a meaningful social thing for people who feel lonely in a crowd, who want to be cuddled but don't feel like it's allowed, who genuinely wish they could be stuffed toys so that they wouldn't feel so weird and awful about it all the time. It's powerfully emotional stuff. Is it not art, though?

I'd just like to direct you, all of you on FA, to  mappy's Foo Foo's Tale, which he's been posting to Onemoon Stories on LJ. If you like my Onemoon stories, you'll love Mappy's. Go read! :)

So let's stay away from trying to define what art is. I hate those arguments. In fact, let's stay away from the term "high art" because it's really problematic. Let's JUST look at furry art as an artistic practice for a while.

Why define furry art? It's a pretty loose gathering of people, all doing very different things. That's the common wisdom, anyway, and it's done us very well. But let's be skeptical of common wisdom! An attempt to define furry art isn't to fix it in time or space, nor is it to morph it into something more desirable or media-friendly, but rather for us to gain a greater self-awareness of what it means to be drawing unpretentiously. Why is this useful? Well, it's not useful in any practical sense, but based on the responses I got to the last journal, we have a community of very artistic people who are completely disconnected from all but a very traditionally-biased point of view on art. I'd hate us to be pigeonholed as Outsider Artists because it would totally gloss over the very specific qualities of furry art that DO make it avant-garde. Ultimately, my goal here is to say "stop worrying, we're doing something new and kind of cool, even academics gotta stop and say whoa".

So what defines furry art? You could say anthropomorphic animals, that's a given. Nevertheless, regardless of what it meant originally in the fandom, no matter how much you try to distill it into "depictions of anthros", furry art inspires a more specific definition. Otherwise, we could start calling sculptures of Bastet furry art, which is, uh, a bit of a stretch! So in order to define furry art, we need to contrast it — there's art that's just plain ol' depictions of animals with human characteristics or vice-versa, and then there's something anyone could legitimately call "furry art". Let's take the superficial similarities for granted. We could get into style, but it's the substance and the practice of creating and sharing that defines furry art as being what it is.

Furry art is participatory

This goes without saying: art made by furry fans outside of the social sphere of furry fandom is somehow... different. If we think of the creation of art as performance, the venue becomes the web and the audience becomes all the other furries. If you stand it aside from the social component and view furry art as pictures, there is nothing new to speak of. In fact, lacking the social component of furry art, it's actually kind of baffling! So it falls flat as traditional art. As performance art, however, it fits into a few really interesting critical frameworks dealing with participation and performance. Not that this matters, but Bourriaud's discussion of relational art fits intriguingly well with what we've been doing for the past decade.

The biggest reason I say that furry art is participatory is that it is very intentionally supposed to increase in impact the more you engage with it. The adoption of a "fursonas" is almost essential in order to exist within the social sphere where furry art starts making sense. I believe the 'personal furry' thing took hold with roleplaying games and FurryMUCK, there's really not much of a history in this regard to refer to, so I'm kind of assuming that's where the whole fursona thing got turned into a fandom-wide phenomenon. Without a fursona, you're kind of barred entry to a lot of furry art practices: getting commissions, art trades, and appearing incidentally as a friend in gift art, engaging socially with fursuiters, etc. In short, if you don't participate in furry art, its appeal will be opaque to you and you won't understand it. Hence, furry art is participatory.

This leads pretty neatly into the second point:

Furry art is a simulacrum of an alternate reality

Wish-fulfillment is an important part of furry art! The art is meant to take this imaginary world in which we're all funny animals and allow it to bleed over into the real world where it's more concrete, more tangible, more distributable. The sheer amount of impossible-fetish porn this results in is not very surprising! Nor are the arguments over realism in the depiction of vore featuring creatures that don't actually exist IRL.

In your answers to the questions I asked in the last journal, verisimilitude was an incredibly important component of "good" art, and works which were abstract, non-representational, or which didn't provide a sort of playful imaginary alternate reality... weren't appreciated quite as much. Pollock came up, frequently, as a seriously detested figure. Anyway, yes. Anatomy becomes crucial, even on completely imaginary creatures, because this alternate world needs to be believable enough to inhabit, at least for a little while.

What ties this all together:

Furry art thrives on pseudonymity

It's a practice in which identity is fluid, where artists and their art blur together. This results in a sort of odd impression where artists are characters, drawing themselves from within the picture frame. These characters, the fursona thing, is definitely the most unique and avant-garde aspect of the art we're making. Many other artists work under pen names, but they've never required others to also adopt character disguises in order to interface with it. I can look at furry art as a regular human unplugged from the community, but until I become Swatcher, until I start commenting on pictures and drawing my own, until I am transformed into Swatcher through art, only then do I have more than a superficial understanding of furry as an artistic practice. That's when I fully "get it". I get what it's for, why it's appealing, and I grok its entire meaning.

It goes without saying that this is VERY different from how we're normally supposed to appreciate art, or even pop-culture. Rather than a white room where there are viewers and artists, the climate here is half invocation, half LARP. Like Dalì's Paranoid-Critical method allowed him access to his particular surrealist imagery, this postmodern roleplay is the headspace we get into in order to create "furry art". Because there are so many of us doing it, and because these aspects of it that I've outlined are unique and contemporary and not really mirrored in any other sort of artform, I would say we have the social capital to legitimately call furry art an art movement. :)

Taking furry values and applying them to artwork outside of the fandom seems like a really interesting idea to me. Art that requires the audience to be equal participants in the creation of new artworks, art that attempts to replicate and act out an alternate reality, art which is best enjoyed by wearing a mask or adopting a fictional persona. If that's furry art, could it exist without anthropomorphic animals?

I don't want to ask any leading questions, so maybe I'll start with a preamble to get my thoughts out and then ask some questions of you guys.

For a long time I was pretty vehement that furry art, furry porn, fursuiting, whatever, was separate and distinct from the institution of "high art". The implication of that is that the former just sort of existed, and that any analysis of it would have to be somewhat anthropological in nature. Certainly not artistic! The latter was the true realm of honest, curatorial critique, where overthinking things and ascribing meaning and value is the norm. Implicit further still is a desire, maybe from both sides, to see high art as a necessary distinction. It keeps the pretentious dreck out of the fun furry porn, and it keeps high art from having to invest itself in an understanding of art beyond its own paradigm. It's pretty neat and tidy.

The thing is, I hate things that are neat and tidy.

And besides, I believe that understanding furry art as a unique, subcultural phenomenon with its own values and qualities within a larger art field can help us all to erase these artificial and somewhat arbitrary divisions between high art and low art, which is pretty peachy, if you ask me!

There are two reasons why this is a good idea:

1- It allows us furry artists to use the tools of academic curatorial critique to understand and justify what we do to a socially sanctioned and privileged art world, and reap some of the benefits. This is not good for simply furry art, but other distinct subcultural artforms as well, be it urban graffiti (especially tagging), cosplay and fanfic, guerilla gardening, or any other sort of artform where a community of people is an intellectually fundamental component of artmaking.

2- It argues to the rarefied art world that there are cool things happening outside their ivory tower, and that they should come out and join the party and stop thinking they're more special than everyone else.

So that's sort of where I'm coming from on this. I do want to focus on furry art though, and understand its values and the paradigm it exists in. So here's where I ask opinions! Some of you may have experiences that give you insight. I'd love to hear from you. You don't need to answer all or even any of these, they're just here to get your gears grinding. :)

- If you didn't get any comments on your work, would you still post it online?
- How would furry art be different if there was no furry porn?
- If you showed your work in an art gallery, how would people react? (and especially the addendum below)
- How would furry art change if there were no conventions?
- What makes fursuiting different from mascotting?
- Who's your least favorite artist outside the fandom? Why?
- Do you think it's worth anything to be asking all these questions?

EDIT: More questions, based on some of the responses!

- Describe bad furry art. Describe bad "high art".
- If a professional art critic wrote an assessment of your work, would you be interested in reading it?
- Remember what the fandom was like in the year 2000? What's going to happen to furry art in the next 10 years?

If you have any other nuggest, give 'em a drop here. I don't think furry art needs to change in order to be accepted by the institution, but I feel like it aught to be (even though I think the institution is pretty dumb), and I want some arguments to bring to bear on the subject so that I can do research and have drunken conversations with PhD'd art critics. :D

Okay, so things are busier and weirder than I was expecting. My bad, honestly. I don't have any excuses for not hurrying up the cakes on these commissions, other than distractions such as school fretting and Minecraft (an addiction which I've temporarily overcome enough to .zip the game folder, preventing me from playing any more). I've set up a clear schedule for working though, and my goal of getting everything done in time for the end of September was uh, probably optimistic. I'll be devoting my Sundays to finishing this queue, starting Sunday after next (since I'll be out of the house almost all this weekend). Just to make sure I actually do this, there'll be a stream on Watchtail every Sunday until these are friggin' done!

Here are the new deadlines, as they currently stand:

October 3rd - devlin (full color)
October 10th - miriafox (full color)
October 17th - Digitalpotato
October 17th - Phoenix-D
October 17th - Phoenix-D
October 24th - Phoenix-D
October 24th - denimwizard/codex
October 31st is Halloween, durr!
November 7th - keweyroo (full color)
November 14th - rabbitshakejake

Man I have been feeling kind of down on my fetishs lately. Someone should draw me up some porn so I remember how to murr again.

Maddragon - A medium sized (but on the small side) fiefdom, tends to attract misfits, refugees, and artists, mostly xenophiles. Generally spoken well of, but not widely recognized. Those who don’t fit in tend to scatter to other fiefdoms. Central to the territory are the Maddragon Arms, an apartment complex and hospice with a fairly high turnover rate but nevertheless maintains a stable population of regulars. New immigrants to Maddragon tend to live at the Arms before finding a tent or apartment to make their homes.

Baudi - A larger fiefdom geographically, but sparsely populated, composed mostly of megalomaniacal artists in their private estates. The residents tend to be tough-talking, rough-housing egotists who are mostly focused on self-promotion. They have a bad habit of taking over territory and kidnapping residents from neighboring fiefdoms for their own nefarious creative purposes. It's one of the few actively dangerous fiefs. It's a miracle the lot of them get along as well as they do. They see the city as clay, ready to be sculpted.

Goosedown - Goosedown takes peace and serenity very seriously. One of the few fiefs where sex is mostly unheard of. Most of the residents resemble toys and dolls, and would rather cuddle and comfort than fuck. In order to keep this peaceful atmosphere, they're one of the most fortified of all the fiefs. A police force of cartoonish knights (called the Vicious Friends) in ornate suits of armor patrol the streets, looking for people who might start trouble, ready to throw them out, or turn them into something less offensive. Like a bunch of neutered hippies, all they want is a life full of peace and hugs.

Tymes - The typical midway, it's very long and narrow and very populated. One of the biggest districts in Onemoon. Here you'll find clowns, circuses, performers, and the usual fairground stuff. The residents tend to have bodies built for physical feats and performance, and they love to show off what's possible with the latest advances in magic and technology. They can be a little bit pushy and exhibitionist in their tricks, but it's all in good fun. Everyone gets off on giving a good show.

Nightview Hall - A small fortified enclave surrounded by a variety of charming shops with vacuously smiling clerks, something is wrong with Nightview Hall. They tend to rope people into joining, at which point they disappear into the enclave, and if they reappear at all, it's with a dopey grin and a sense of belonging. The baroness Radapon Heart runs a tight ship, and expects obedience from the residents. Everyone seems to be a part of some D/s relationship here. Perhaps knowing one's place its own reward.

West Cider and East Cider- This could technically be considered one fief, it it weren't for an ideological difference over gender. West Cider consists of men, and celebrates the male body and the masculine arts. East Cider, naturally, consists merely of women who prefer the feminine. Both sides are locked in a battle of the sexes, with a river as their battleground. They also have a vested interest in converting the rest of Onemoon to their side, which naturally makes everyone a bit uneasy.

Honeybine - Right at Onemoon's border, as the river that runs through Onemoon pours out to the world outside, is a fief built on trade, markets and business. These are usually Onemoon old-timers or natives who are bored with the everyday party atmosphere of the city and are fascinated by what's outside of it. They're a bit of a port zone, filled with smallish inns and fancier hotels. The lifestyle is upscale: lavish golden banisters and white marble, ornate leaded glass, and fantastic fashions with lots of feathers. Business happens here. They seek money and exotic goods to give meaning to their lives.

Pan's Folly - Another big district. They take things to an excess. Lots of food, big exaggerated bodies, ridiculous proportions, lots of drugs and alcohol. This was after the founder Wilhelm Pan embarked on a spiritual mission: to rid himself of the guilt and shame imposed upon him by a prudish society, he paraded about naked, stroking his cock, always speaking his mind. This is not the place to go if you have social mores. The residents mostly keep to themselves, fucking each other's brains out with their artificially enlarged genitals while boozing and smoking. The name is somewhat derogatory, but it stuck. There's not much architecture here, it's mostly temporary tents. Building is kind of boring.

Brokenmine - From the outside, everyone in Brokenmine is crazy. But they don't think so. Even Maddragon sends people here. It's a place for the real visionaries. So suffused with experimental magic, the very laws of reality quiver in the aether. Abutting one of the massive cliffs that flanks the city, Brokenmine's name naturally comes from the underground caverns which make up the meat of the fief. Nobody knows how extensive they are, but once you're down there things tend to get very strange very quickly. Every now and then, a very powerful magic item emerges, and there's a brief war to acquire it. Nobody knows if Brokenmine could be taken over completely and its madness harnessed. Most fiefs are too afraid to try.

So hey, here we are paging the peanut gallery again!

When I first joined FA, I decided that I wanted a very strict break between my furry activities and my so-called real life. At the time, it was appealing to have these two domains be very exclusive. I didn't want anyone from RL stumbling across my SECRET PERVOSEXUALITY, and I didn't want anyone from furryland stumbling across my real life and, say, post about fetishes on my facebook page where my entire extended family could see. I mean, I think that makes a bit of sense, still.

But uh, I digress, that's just to explain why I created Swatcher, and why he's intentionally different than me in terms of appearance and personality!

I'm becoming a lot more confident being myself and embracing my sexuality as it is. Swatcher has always been an alter-ego, a character that exaggerates but a small part of my personality, someone unflappable and predictably mischevious that I could pretend to be to loosen up my inhibitions. But, you know, he's not me. I've got cartoonish elements to my personality for sure, but I'm not a cartoon in my day to day life, which is the me I feel way more at ease being. However! Pretending to be my alter-ego precludes me from really identifying intensely with the characters I draw in fetishy situations, and for getting-off purposes, I want some potent shit! I won't ever get to really TF into anything, so having a character that's a little closer to the "real me" while still being physically murry enough to attract some love would be really boss.

I would already have such a character, but for the life of me, I can't decide on what species I am! I'm always thinking ehhhh I wanna be this or that but I can never settle. I need some outside insight, because some of you are way better at this than me. What species am I, the voice behind Swatcher? You've read my journals, maybe you've met me in person. What am I?

EDIT: I know I can be whatever I want to be, damn it! Answer the question. ^^

EDIT x2: Just FYI... I could never replace Swatcher as my main man! I'm still Swatcher, and I love being Swatcher, and Swatcher loves being me, I promise. All I'm searching for is a species for my self-insertion character, and having a hell of a hard time settling on anything. There's just too many that I like!

Hey everyone, I've been somewhat overanxious this past week and a half, and haven't been drawing much. Classes start Tuesday and I've deposited my tuition cheque... I had to take out a loan after all. Now all I need to do is pay back my debt and I'll have paid for this year! So now I'm $2,000 in debt, and I'm about to pay back $500, so that makes another $1,500 to make up. Most of this queue has paid me already. Let's see if I can make another $500 by the end of September! Dollar dollar bill, y'all!

Here's the queue as it stands so far. Naturally my pace is going to be a bit slower than during the summer now that I'm taking classes, but I can get everything up to slot 15 here done by the end of September for sure. That's like, what, a drawing every other day? Yeah, I can do that. Flir, I know I still owe you a pic, you are here on the list in my mind.

1- devlin (full color)
2- miriafox (full color)
3- Digitalpotato
4- Phoenix-D
5- Phoenix-D
6- Phoenix-D
7- denimwizard/codex
8- 455510
9- keweyroo (full color)
10- rabbitshakejake
11-
12-
13-
14-

You'll also notice that the list of slots is a lot shorter now. I'm investigating other sources of income, as completing commissions has become/will become increasingly difficult due to cares. That's not to say I won't accept more commissions after this, I just want to be able to take a guilt-free break for a while.

Just a reminder:

Color sketches - ($30 for one character) (+ $10 for each additional character)
Example: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4241962/

Full-color, "finalized" images - ($100 baseline... note me with your idea and I'll let you know)
Example: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4287940/

Comment and be explicit that you want to buy a commission. If I add you to the list, send me a note with your request. I'll send you my paypal address where you can send me the money. I'd prefer money upfront, but other payment plans are okay. The only condition is that I see the money before you see the picture. If you really dig what I drew for you, you can send extra money/tips, it's always appreciated. Just treat me like the classy art whore that I am and everything will be peachy. :)

... that  larathelabrat has less than 1,000 watchers? Go watch that dude RIGHT NOW. He is FANTASTIC!

Hey y'all! Here's a bunch of blank book textures for you to use in whatever project you want. Some of them are books I took and erased the cover images, others are ones I made from scratch. I think one or two of them are CC licenced from flickr, but I totally forget who they're by. I'm a bad person! Anyway, the whole thing is share-alike or whatever, so here, go nuts!

EDIT: If you're having trouble opening them, they're JPGs!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7012280/Blank%20Books.zip