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June 2015

Newsbytes archive for May 2015

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Contributors this month include crossaffliction, dronon, GreenReaper, InkyCrow, mwalimu and Patch Packrat.

The mouse marches north

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Darth VerminBow to the almighty Death Star, you pitiful citizens of Alderaan! You are at the mercy of Mouse Vader!

That's how it feels lately, with the Walt Disney Company going on a shopping spree. They picked up Marvel Entertainment (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk) back in 2009, then Lucasfilm (Star Wars) in 2012, and almost bought Hasbro in 2013. Now they have signed a deal with Canadian broadcaster Corus Entertainment (Corus Ent) to bring The Disney Channel to Canada in 2017.

While this means most of the Disney Channel programs that currently air on Family will move there (and that Disney XD Canada and Disney Jr. Canada [English and French] will be re-named Family XTRM and Family Junior, respectively), Canadian furries and cartoon fans can only hope they'll get a maple leaf version of the late Toon Disney and air The Disney Afternoon programs, though they have gotten lucky with Nickelodeon Canada airing a long retro block of Nicktoons in the afternoon, so anything is possible!

American Pharoah becomes first Triple Crown winning horse in 37 years

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Image copyright Bob Carr of Getty Images
Image copyright Bob Carr of Getty Images

The streak is over! Flayrah is running the first story about a non-anthropomorphic animal since September of last year.

Also, colt American Pharoah has won the Triple Crown, becoming the first horse to win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and, finally today, the Belmont Stakes since Affirmed in 1978. American Pharoah is only the twelfth horse to win all three races since Sir Barton became the first in 1919.

Furry artist Sebastian Rivers' home destroyed by fire

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On March 6th, 2015, furry artist Sebastian Rivers (known as "Lurid" or "Mori" in the furry fandom) and over 60 other people found their homes in Schenectady, NY engulfed in flames. Four people lost their lives in the blaze, and the rest became homeless overnight.

Besides losing his home and his four cats (who were like his children), Sebastian lost all of his sketchbooks, laptop and Wacom tablet: the tools he used for his digital painting, his sole source of income. For the time being, he has a place to stay, but it is temporary.

James Alexander Wolfe, who has been a friend of Sebastian's for a little over 2 years, has set up a GoFundMe Fundraiser account on his behalf. James has set the goal at $3,000, because with that money, Sebastian could buy a new laptop and tablet to re-establish his business, and have enough left over to help him get back on his feet.

As James puts it, "I hope you find it in your hearts to help my friend in his time of need, and I thank all of you that took the time to read this."

Update (June 6): If you prefer PayPal to GoFundMe, Sebastian wrote that "VGAcolor [at] gmail.com is my Paypal email. even $1s help; i am really damn close!! so please help or [spread the word] if you can! thank you".

In addition to the GoFundMe, Sebastian is accepting commissions to do art (using pencil, ink and colored pencil) on 9x12 inches, 75 lb archival paper. Inked art is $20 (example) and colored pencil art is $50.

First character images of 'Zootopia' revealed

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Nick and Judy

The first character images of the upcoming movie Zootopia have been revealed [Tip: GuilRosmer via Reddit]; meet the two main characters. Wunza a criminal fox (Nick Wilde, played by Jason Bateman). Wunza cop bunny (Judy Hopps, played by Ginnifer Goodwin). Together, they fight crime. Or something. Details on the actual plot are scarce at this point.

The movie will be co-directed by Disney veterans Rich Moore and Byron Howard, and the release date is currently scheduled for March of next year. This is one of four movies featuring complete casts of fully anthropomorphic animals planned for wide release in 2016; the others include Kung Fu Panda 3 in January, plus Sly Cooper and Spark, which currently don't have release dates.

Update (6/11): Now with a teaser trailer. (Tip: Mink)

'Kung Fu Panda 3' images begin to appear as well

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Father and Son

As if in response to Disney's Zootopia featuring the groan-worthy tagline "Like nothing you've seen be-fur," DreamWorks Animation has finally shed some light on its Kung Fu Panda 3 in an article from USA Today. Seeing as how Kung Fu Panda 3 is the third movie in a trilogy that comes out in January 2016 and Zootopia is a March 2016 movie, that makes the tagline wildly inaccurate as well as groan-worthy. Furries are looking forward to both, but, hey, it's a bad tagline.

Spoiler warning: The USA Today article linked may have bluntly spoiled a possible subplot, which is discussed below the break.

Update (6/13): A Chinese language trailer has apparently been leaked; it's since been taken down.

Update (6/19): An official English trailer appears, and it is hilarious.

Newest Star Fox game gains trailer and subtitle: "Zero"

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After Nintendo vaguely announced a new Star Fox Wii U game last year, they have finally released a trailer and full name at this year's E3. The newest game will be called Star Fox: Zero.

Apparently, it's yet another remake of the original Star Fox, with some elements of later versions. For those keeping track at home, Star Fox now has the same amount of remakes as it does sequels.

Doggy derring-do to get big-screen debut

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Adding to the list of upcoming anthropomorphic animal movies, a feature film version of 1980s cartoon Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds was announced at the Annecy Film Festival on June 15.

dogtanian.jpg

As the title suggests, Dogtanian was an adaptation of The Three Musketeers, with dogs in the roles of d'Artagnan and his friends. Your humble reporter surely cannot have been the only nascent furry to be stirred by the portrayal of Aramis, one of literature's great lovers, as a Springer Spaniel.

Trailer: 'The Secret Life of Pets'

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And we've just become furry Variety.

Illumination Entertainment has released a trailer for The Secret Life of Pets, due summer of 2016, "a comedy about the lives our pets lead after we leave for work or school each day," according to Illumination's own description.

Given how jam-packed 2016 is with fully anthropomorphic animal movies, the fact that this movie only features talking animals makes it feel like almost a footnote (Finding Dory is another 2016 movie with "only" talking animals that would in any other year be the upcoming furry movie, but is also dealt with as an after thought, if at all). That being said, at the very least skip to the pogoing poodle at the end of the trailer.

Update (11/25): A second, Christmas themed trailer highlighting characters has been released.

Doug Winger loses battle with COPD

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Doug Winger, 1955-2015Legendary furry artist Doug Winger, is expected to last only a few hours, according to local friend Bob Guthrie, after doctors removed the ventilator keeping his failing body alive per his DNR order.

Update (13:20 PT): Doug Winger has passed away at the Western Medical Center in Tustin, California.

One of the greats, one of the true giants of the furry fandom, has lost his battle with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, or emphysema, brought about by smoking and other ailments.

FurrTrax is a new furry social network

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FurrTrax is a mobile app, social networking site and collaboration system to help members of the furry fandom organize, plan events, make friends and find other furries in their local areas or with simular interests.

Key features include public and private chatrooms, including video chatrooms, a public shoutbox, webmail hosting, heavily customizable user profiles, with user manageable comments walls and user image gallery and file sharing, GPS distances of members (but not actual pinpoints), event posting and planning, singles and dating, private messaging, image galleries, a section for authors and their stories, including fiction and non-fiction, user forums, a classified section, a user to user store, groups pages with group walls and status updates and notification. Instant messaging is not yet available but is coming soon.

FurrTrax is not a paysite, or a subscription site, and does not require any purchase of any kind to use all of the sites sections. There is however a Donator Rank which offers some basic bonuses including choice of name color, colored chat text, the ability to add background images to profiles, attach extra profile pictures over the default of 10, embed YouTube videos on profile and access the rich profile editor tool. The minimum donation is one dollar. All features not listed here are given to basic members by default.

The FurrTrax mobile site is also in transition to a new Jquery mobile theme, so some pages may not match the look of others. This is temporary.