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Zee Best of Pepe Le Pew
Thanks to the folks at Cartoon Brew and TV on DVD, we now know that the next release in Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes Super Stars series will be Pepe Le Pew: Zee Best of Zee Best. In spite of what this single-DVD collection’s box cover says, it actually contains 17 cartoons: All 15 of Chuck Jones’ Pepe cartoons, a one-off directed by Art Davis (Odor of the Day), and one Tweety Bird cartoon (Dog Pounded, directed by Friz Freleng) in which Pepe makes a cameo appearance. Everyone’s favorite romantic skunk with zee accent of LOVE comes to DVD on December 27th.
image c. 2011 Warner Brothers
Is there anything that you think is "required reading" for the fandom?
I'm curious of the opinions of y'all. Is there anything that you think people should read in order to gain a more full understanding of the fandom at large? I can't think of anything right now, but if I can later I'll be sure to edit it in.
Edit: for clarity's sake, this is for my boyfriend, not me. I've been in the fandom for quite a while, but I couldn't think of anything to recommend to him that would give him an idea of the kind of stuff we enjoy that's non-smutty.
submitted by yiffafox[link] [21 comments]
TigerTails Radio - Season 6 - Episode 02 - The One Where The Cast were Ready on Time
Nicodemus Rat: September 2011 Featured Fursuiter of the Month
Adam Riggs, of Bainbridge Island, Wash., better known as Nicodemus Rat in the fandom, cuts some fur in his home workshop. Riggs wrote the fursuit building guidebook 'Critter Costuming,' which is for sale through Ibexa Press at Amazon.com. Photo by Vincent Tannahill
In front of a capacity crowd attending the Rainfurrest 2009 Guest of Honor dinner and roast, furry stand-up comedian 2 the Ranting Gryphon once told a story about attending his first furry convention. Apprehensive about being at the inaugural Midwest FurFest in 2000 and what he would see, the first thing that 2 witnessed once entering the hotel doors at the Sheraton Chicago Northwest was “a rat in a jester suit, juggling bean bags.”
The man in that rat suit was Adam Riggs, better known in the fandom as Nicodemus Rat, the Furry News Network (FNN) Featured Fursuiter of the Month for September.
“From that point on,” the gryphon added, “I knew that my journey through this fandom was going to be magical.”
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER
Much like July’s featured fursuiter Jimmy Chin (Yippee Coyote), Riggs, who currently lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington state, has been around the fandom for longer than many of its current members have been alive.
He first came across furry on what he termed as a “chance encounter,” in the early 1990s, the days when furry was really unknown to the rest of the world, with no public visibility.
“People were looking up characters or mascots they liked, and found a link to the furry fandom,” Riggs recalled. “That was the way a lot of us got into it.”
Getting involved through Usenet forums as well as the alt.fan.furry group, Riggs’ long-standing love for fursuits and fursuit creation began as he browsed some posts that piqued his interest.
“I always liked mascot costumes and theme park costumes, they were very professional, very expensive,” he said. “It was not a hobby, it was something you do as a job. After coming across furry, I found there were people that do this just because it’s fun, and I had to be part of that.”
Having loved rat and mouse characters since he was young, Riggs made a rat fursona named Nicodemus, after the character from The Secret of NIMH, and attended first furry convention in 1997, Confurence 8. Just before then, he met his wife, Beth (Kit-Ping), while a student at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., eventually bringing her into the fandom.
“It was a similar sort of thing, she liked animal characters, she always liked cats,” Riggs explained. “It was a natural thing.”
The couple has two kids, Timothy, age four, and Charlotte, five months – and their oldest has already taken a liking to anthro characters.
“He knows they’re costumed characters, and he’s really into pretend right now, so they’re also real,” said Riggs, noting that his son doesn’t enjoy wearing costumes quite as much. “We try make sure he’s well behaved around costumes and isn’t one of those ‘terror children.’ The last time we had him at a furry convention it was marvelous, (he was) wide-eyed, trying to hug every fursuit he saw.”
HOT OFF THE PRESS
Although writing furry fiction is one of Riggs’ hobbies, he entered another realm of authoring back in 2004 when he wrote the acclaimed book, “Critter Costuming: Making Mascots and Fabricating Fursuits.”
Even to this day, it stands as the only published definitive guide to fursuit building, featuring over 200 pages of step-by-step instructions and tips on design, materials and performance to help get first-time suit makers off the ground. In the years before, Riggs had hosted many panels at conventions regarding all aspects of fursuit building, and had quite a collection of handouts and quick-reference sheets built up. While wondering what on earth he could do with all that material, a representative from Ibexa Press came up to him with a proposition.
“She just approached me, saying ‘I do some costume/craft books already and I’d like to do one for fursuiting, you seem to know what you’re talking about… would you be willing to write a book?’” Riggs recalled.
A self-proclaimed “materials nut,” Riggs built several projects just to use as examples in “Critter Costuming,” while spending over a year and a half on the manuscript itself – not to mention side tasks like testing stretch properties and water absorption rates for eight makes of fur. As many topics as his book covers, Riggs, who works as a Technical Project Manager for a local software company, admits that it’s far from a tell-all guide, and especially with the innovations and creativity seen today in the world of fursuit building.
“When I was writing the book people weren’t doing perspective (3D) eyes,” he said, adding that he’s interested in possibly updating his book at some point. “There’s all sorts of things there, and one book isn’t able to cover it. I did my best to make it a good beginner’s guide, so it would give all the basics and familiarize you with all the aspects of a project from beginning to end, a good grounding and road map.”
Riggs debuted his newest suit, Tatters the werewolf, at Rainfurrest in 2009 when he was the fursuit Guest of Honor. Photo by Beth Riggs
A STUNNING CHANGE
Having been around the block a few times, Riggs said that the most remarkable change he’s seen in the fandom over the past 15 years or so is the sheer quality and scope of fan endeavors.
“The fandom has gotten very large, and that’s good and bad, but it has acquired a lot of talent, and people that are willing to give their time,” Riggs noted. “The professional (work) you’re seeing and the sophistication of the hand-made products is remarkable, and unique to the furry fandom. In the sci-fi fandom, you do see fan-produced things, but you don’t see a lot of fan-produced merchandise. Most of it is mass, commercially produced.”
Riggs has been floored by productions such as Kazu and the recent release of Bitter Lake, admitting that things of that magnitude were not even fathomable as little as a decade ago.
“Furry fandom is really about inventing itself, and building things for itself, which is really amazing and something I find wonderful about it,” he lauded. “It’s an aspect of what makes furry a community. These days, you’re seeing fursuits that are better-made and better looking than mascot costumes, in some cases better than effects costumes in movies. When I joined the fandom, that was unthinkable. Looking back at Confurence photos, that was the state of fursuiting, and we’re leaps and bounds ahead of that.”
A fursuit performer himself, Riggs has been out many times for local community and charity events both up in the Pacific Northwest and down in the Bay area of California, where he is from.
With the fandom entering mainstream through television coverage of conventions and other programs featuring fursuiters for better or for worse, Riggs believes that those that perform in front of an audience have much more of a far-reaching impact than people may think.
“Every performance you give in public, you’re not just representing yourself, you’re representing the furry fandom as a whole,” he stated. “We have a very special role as the visible ambassadors of the fandom. It’s entirely unfair that the public equates fursuiting with furry, but it is largely the case, because of television coverage. That gives tremendous power, but also requires responsibility. We have tremendous potential to demonstrate the wonderful aspects of furry and how much we can create joy in the world with the people watching, but it comes with responsibility as well.”
Coming up next for Riggs is his “local” furry con, Rainfurrest, at the end of the month, and he also plans to build a rat partial in time for Halloween and try to get some of his written fiction work published. With a full-time job and a family, he may be lucky just to catch a wink every now and then.
“Between the writing, making fursuits, occasionally finding time to perform in fursuit, attending furry cons, and raising two kids, that pretty much fills the schedule,” he said. “Oh yeah, and sleep. I should probably do that, too.”
—————
Q & A with Adam Riggs, “Nicodemus Rat”
Q: You had the honor of being named the Fursuit Guest of Honor at Rainfurrest 2009, what was that experience like?
A: It was a rush. Going to a con is normally a rush for me, I’m normally a quiet, isolated person, but convention time comes around and I become ‘bouncy rat.’ It was the normal rush, plus ‘Oh my God there’s my name in the con book and people wanting to meet me, and there’s a dinner event… at 3 p.m. I have to be here, and 4 p.m. I have to be over here. And I had to get out and fursuit too if I was the fursuit Guest of Honor. It was wild, hectic, but absolutely wonderful. I love the Rainfurrest con staff, they did a great job and I had a great time. It was really an honor, very special.
Q: After attending conventions for 14 years now, what do you enjoy the most about them?
A: So many of the great moments at cons for me are just getting a chance to meet people I know or have heard about, and connect with them about something we both care about. Usually fursuiting, sometimes writing, sometimes species. There aren’t many people in the world that want to talk about the fine points of latex slip casting and surface painting… Ysengrin and I had an hour-long conversation about that (laughs). That was really wonderful, because that doesn’t happen often in the world.
Q: What originally drew you into the fursuiting aspect of the fandom?
A: It was the first way I got involved. I always liked furry characters, cartoon characters, I’ve always liked rat characters. Finding other people that were interested in cartoon characters, (at first) thinking, ‘nah, that’s childish,’ and then seeing, ‘wait a minute, other people like this stuff, cool!’ I enjoy doing craft-sort of stuff, and so (fursuit building) was a way I could contribute. I’m working on being more of a writer in the fandom as well now, but back then there wasn’t nearly as much writing. Fursuiting was the first thing were I could get into it and feel like I was part of (the fandom), as opposed to being an observer.
Click here to check out Riggs’ book, “Critter Costuming,” on Amazon.
Editor’s note: The FNN Featured Fursuiter of the Month is a new profile series written by Kijani. Every month he will choose one well-recognized figure in the fandom’s fursuiting community, offering a unique “behind the mask” look at how they got into the fandom, their characters, and lives outside of fursuiting.
Eurofurence 17 Press Coverage
This year’s Eurofurence which was held in Magdeburg, Germany in August received a large amount of press attention in Germany. It was featured prominently local newspapers and also covered on Television by RTL and picked up around the World from Reuters. We have a list here of most of the news coverage, which focused primarily on fursuiting both at the con and out of it:
Video (YouTube)
Reuters (English)
RTLII News (German, English Subtitles)
RTL Explosiv (German)
RTL Punkt 12 (German)
MDR Sachsen-Anhalt Heute Regional News (German)
M6 (Frankreich, RTL-Gruppe) (French)
English subtitles may have been added to some of these videos since publication
Press
Magdeburger Volksstimme (Local Daily):
Generalanzeiger (Local Free Weekly):
Online Articles:
Author would like to thank Eurofurence’s Press Relations for their assistance in compiling this list.
Some art I did of my otter character.
Lets get some fursuit pics in here. Here's mine
Thanks, Smokey. Comedy for animal lovers. NSFW
Calling all Furries with Non-Furry Mates
I've noticed this strange phenomenon that more than any other fandom or group I can think of, excluding religions, furries will only choose other furries for mates. Most furries can't seem to imagine dating a non furry, and truthfully neither can I. I'd really like to see if anyone has any insight on this. Most of all I'd like to hear about the experiences of furs with non furry mates. Do you share that part of your life with your mate much? If so, how does it work out?
submitted by ZenDragon[link] [52 comments]
Who's going to MFF?
I know it's a bit early to be discussing Midwest FurFest (which is in November) but this will be my second fur con as well as my first visit to the US! So needless to say, Im pretty pumped about it :) Too bad there aren't any r/furry shirts around! Yet? XD
submitted by AirGuiTaR[link] [8 comments]
reddit flair experiment: ?_?
Reddit has some great features, like voting and style customization. But, some forum features, like user profiles and profiles images, are missing.
Current problems with updating flair:
- I'm lazy. Even with a script, it is still work checking the spreadsheet and executing the update script.
- It's not secure. Anyone can change any user's flair.
- Because a mod is needed to update the flair, a secure interface needs to be made to update the flair. Right now, I am that interface. A bot could be created, but it would have to be created (more work) and it could be hacked (allowing for mod access).
- Only about 50 users (70 if duplicates are included) who have submitted flair.
I'm not disabling flair, but I cannot update it very often, because I have college work to think about.
submitted by electricfoxx[link] [11 comments]
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