footsie, looks awesome ^w^

I'm glad you like it, but James doesn't seem to be too happy.

can't imagine why XD

Well, methinks you'll have to wait for the story to come out to see. [/teaser]

well then i can't wait to see :3

lol xD Thanks for the fave!

Hm..on the one hand, footsie is kinda innocent enough, though I can understand where Rick is coming from. That being said, unwanted footsie is an entirely different matter, though without context this could just be a matter of someone being grumpy. At any rate, the perspective here is nicely done. Good, solid linework..but that seems to be a RG staple.

Very nice work.

It's less the footsie, more the gay footsie, and it's not exactly 'unwilling'...but it is. It's complicated. And yes, Rick did a spectacular job on this, even though it's just an Iron Artist. I got these pictures a few days ago, and I was absolutely ecstatic. Immediately went about adding them into the Word doc and cue the formatting frenzy.

A friend of mine who is also Christian did this for us http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1846692/ it was the same sorta thing, kinda working outside of their comfort zone.

I really feel for the people that do that sort of thing, because it really is hard testing your own boundaries and creating something that strikes you as wrong. I did something very much the same with the story that goes along with this, and it really makes you think about what your beliefs are and how strongly you subscribe to them, or if you even want to do so anymore. It can be a life-changing thing, so I really sympathize with people who go out of comfort zones. For this, though, I think it was less a personal comfort zone for Rick, and more of a suspicion that there would be an audience backlash.

Yeah. I have a ton of respect for him. I definitely need to create something for him as a thank you for the inspiration he's been to me.

Ditto; he's a great artist with a mature outlook on art, rather unlike the porn dump that seems to occur hourly here. I have nothing against people who draw porn at all, I simply wish that there was a lot more substantial artistic work in the fandom as opposed to 90% porn, 10% art. I'm very much in agreement with Rick: I want furry to be taken seriously as an artistic style rather than the admittedly reasonable judgement that the visible portion of the fandom fixates on pornographic art.

If you want to do something for Rick, I'd be up for collaborating with you. I'm a writer myself, though almost exclusively on the prose side of it.

I think the fandom is starting to be taken a bit more seriously:that being said, I hope it's never taken -too- seriously. I mean, come on. The silliness is part of the fun of it. At least for me. NOTHING should be taken too seriously, especially art. At least, that's my opinion.
Furry as a 'style' really doesn't make much sense, anyways, since a 'style' is a predefined thing; Furry is a whole lot of things. It's something different to everyone. If some people choose to think of us as nothing but a bunch of perverts, so what? I mean, why does anyone care what people who don't take time to get to know us personally think?

As far as the prose, I'll keep it in mind. I do my stuff spur of the moment, though. My attention span being what it is, collaborating with me would most likely drive you nuts. Any time I commit to something I end up procrastinating lol

Agreed. I suppose I simply mean that I don't want it to be sniggered at. Normally I don't care what others think, and when it comes to furry I'm no different: I tell people that I'm a furry without hesitation. What irritates me is that people assume that I'm the type of furry who is obsessed with sex. That furry is known mostly for the sexual aspect is frustrating for me, because it ostracizes me as an author if I ever want to do something serious. As an example, take Kyell Gold. I enjoy his books, every one of them, and he has an incredibly large audience within the furry audience, but that's basically where his audience ends. I don't want my audience to end at furries, I want my audience to extend beyond that. But likewise, I'm not willing to be solely PG/PG-13 with my work for the same reasons that I was discussing with Rick on DeviantArt: it limits my ability to communicate serious issues, issues that go beyond the PG-13 rating, and sometimes that means sex. With the ubiquity of pornography in the furry community though, that makes it almost impossible to depict mature issues and have it taken seriously outside of the furry community. To me, that's what it means to be taken seriously as an art form: your work is not ostracized by the public and/or academia because of the stereotypes associated with its contemporaries. It's looked at as art, and nothing less. As an author, I'm reliant on my audience. I can write for myself, but then I'm denying the very fundamental of being an author, which is to communicate a message to an audience beyond myself. Sure I can write for myself, but what's the point? Therapy? I want my work to be seen and admired or despised, a critical success or a critical failure or something in-between. I can and do write childrens' literature, but as an artist I don't want to be confined to that, because there are so many other ideas that I can bring to the world. I'm a creator, and I would like to share my creations and bring happiness to others. I did it as a teacher, I can do it as an author.

lol, I didn't mean you had to write prose. I had a look at your gallery, and there's quite a bit of admirable poetry there. I specialize in prose, but I can work with poetry, even with epiphany flashes. I'm just thinking that maybe we should do something tangible for Rick; having fans and fan messages is all well and good, but having people actually show you how much of an influence you have been can make you feel like the king of the world.

If you want to be despised or loved..why would you change the perception? People are going to either love you or hate you. As far as academia..no offense, but really, dude?

I don't want to judge you without getting to know you, and please correct me if I'm off base but I detect a certain amount of..I dunno. Again, I hate to make judgement calls so early but the fact is, furry is always going to be something people don't take all that seriously. If you're looking to do the academia waltz, I think you're expecting a little much. It's a goofy, silly fandom and that's probably one of the greatest things about it.

But then, I have a very 'fuck the haters, do what you want, say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind' attitude about the fandom. I'd rather be hated for what I am than be loved for what I'm not, all that rah rah fuck the police rah.

I guess what I'm saying is, the only person limiting your ability here is you. It sounds like you're doing a lot of self-judging. Again, no offense but it seems you're wanting to change the fandom to fit your perception of what it should be instead of adapting to the way the fandom is and figured out a way to work that to your advantage. all while ignoring the kinds of people who judge you and your work according to a stereotype before they get to know you and your work.


Then again, I could be totally wrong here. As far as Rick goes...I'll definitely think about it. I still have some things of my own i'm dragging my heels on, I need to get that stuff squared away before I get too deep into anything else.

I don't want to change the fandom, I simply lament that the fandom is as focused on pornographic/erotic art as it is compared to its samples of other artistic styles. I enjoy the fandom, I really do, but I am an academic at heart. I'm not an arrogant academic; I don't see something as inferior because it isn't part of the literary canon or anything. I see value in all art forms, and erotica is no different, either visually or literary. I enjoy the goofiness of the fandom, but I also enjoy those pieces that are serious. If I didn't appreciate silliness, I wouldn't be a fan of Rick's, since the most notable part of his career is focused on comedy. But I also want to explore other avenues; furry doesn't have to only be silly, and as many artistic pieces show, there is a great deal of excellent art to be admired. I don't want to change the fandom to suit my perception at all, you're way off-base with that, but I am passionate about furry work and it really is almost painful to see it dismissed publically and critically as easily as it is. It's like watching some homeless person in the gutter who is there only because they have no motivation to better themselves. It's not about bettering oneself for others, it's about bettering oneself for oneself, and once you are able to do so you begin to see the effect it has not only on you but on others as well, and it feels so good that you want to do it again. What you say about being hated for what you are rather than loved for what you're not is very much what I subscribe to, but there's a difference between hatred and negligence. We're naturally a social animal for a reason. If my work only ever reaches a furry audience, then I can die happy, but if I can expand my audience beyond such a small scope, then I can die ecstatic, because that means that I am able to do more than appeal to a certain type of person. Nobody can please everybody, of this I'm all too aware, but I don't want to please everybody, I want to spread my ideas to the world. I am self-judging, because nobody else has to look at me in the mirror at the end of the day. The only person who has to live with myself 100% of the time is me, and if I can always work towards improving myself - of which, in writing, is often signified by a loyal and diverse fanbase - then I can die satisfied. The state of the fandom doesn't deter me from doing what I want to do, it simply provides hurdles that I must work towards clearing, and I'm okay with that.

I totally understand where you're coming from, I really, truly do..that being said, the best-and worst-thing about this fandom is the fact that it's something completely different to everyone.

Yeah..that causes issues and means that some people think it's amazing, some think it's horrible, most people in the fandom are somewhere in between and most people don't even know it exists at all or know what it is or care what it is even when they do hear of it.

And maybe that's a bad thing, maybe we should want to do better...but the thing that makes the fandom so great is that it resists being pigeon holed. It resists being clearly defined. It's accessible. It's welcoming. Sure, maybe it's a little -too- welcoming at times yet if the majority of the fandom decided to up and set a clear definition and attempted to force people to go by that definition and marginalize anyone who doesn't fit into that description (the fandoms 'Uncle Franks'), it would lose the very thing that makes it so great and cease being the fandom as you and I know it.

I just feel that the fandom is on the verge of gaining real acceptance and I worry that people will forget the fact that this fandom is a bastion of hope for a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have anywhere to go. If being that bastion means maybe we sacrifice some respectability, I'd say it's a price worth being paid.

i suppose the plus of footsie like this:
the otter doesn't have ice cold feet like i do ^^"

used to try and do this to my roomy when he and i dated and ALWAYS made him yell cuz of how cold my body is compared to his ^^"

hope to see more of these two over time dude :)

We'll see how it goes; the story the pictures are based on was rejected by SofaWolf, so I'm goin to give it a few edits in my spare time and maybe post it here when it's done.

awesome :)

i need to do same with mine i couldn't meet deadline for with Roar 4 and the one rejected from Fang 5 back in '11. (editing staff liked the stories, and the Roar one i just only failed to make edit deadlines or i'd have been in ><")

I didn't think those magazines were still going. I'll have to look into more, but I really thought that SofaWolf was the only semi-regular publisher.

FurPlanet and BadDogBooks are still around. SofaWolf just has most steady streamline of publishings and working editors though

Definitely have to look into those then =3 Thanks man! I wouldn't mind chatting with you over Skype if you'd like to add me; much more convenient than comments in pictures, and I'm on right now doing homework at uni xD

Damn trigger finger. I meant to say thanks for the compliment xD

The look on his face , those footsies .. love this pic 030

Whose face, the otter or the foxes? And yes the footsies. Not as nice as you may think though :P

Both of them x3 And really ? Why's that 030

Just part of the story really, it's a pretty dark one.

Fox doesn't look please. I'd have no objections though ^^