M.C.A. Hogarth is collecting funding to publish a "how-to" business book aimed at creative types (writers, artists, crafters, etc); the book features topics ranging from day jobs to time management to metrics (sample chapters) and is illustrated throughout by three cartoon jaguars, "Artist," "Business Manager" and "Marketer."

Four days into the campaign, the project is 43% funded; "perks" on offer include PDF and paper copies, cartoon sponsor page placements, and personal consultations.

Update (20 May): The project has been cancelled.

Voting for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards, for the best anthropomorphic literature and art of the calendar year 2011 in eleven categories, closes on May 4.

If you have not voted yet, you have one week left to do so on the Ursa Major Awards website.

The finalists are . . .

Furry art community Inkbunny has announced several upgrades, including increased max. submission size (30Mb; 6000x6000), greater control over notices, improved keyword suggestion, and the ability to search by content rating, time range or user.

The update is the first since September 2011 – though some changes had been made earlier, but not announced.

User feedback has been generally positive so far, although the new "suggested submissions" feature (which highlights work favourited by watched users) received a mixed response.

Inkbunny hosts over 180,000 submissions and has 96,000 members; ~10,000 are active in any one day. It was recently nominated as Best Website for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards.

I can't believe that nobody has posted this here yet! Coming June 8.

This is pretty tangential to Furrydom, but on November 21st Chronicle Books will publish a biography of Ward Kimball (1914-2002), the animator responsible for many of Disney’s most anthropomorphic cartoon characters from the 1930s until his retirement in the 1970s.

Canadian convention Furnal Equinox held its third edition on the weekend of March 16–18 in Toronto.

The 2012 convention attracted over 630 attendees over three days, a 40% increase over 2011, and maintained its status as Canada's largest furry convention by attendance.

The Furry Basketball Association is accepting character submissions for the 2012 FBA Draft.

The Furry Basketball Association is a fantasy basketball league built and supported by the furry fandom. It has grown through the creative contributions of dozens of furries who have created the league's 24 teams and more than 350 players.

Every year the FBA opens up for new characters, usually arond mid-March. These new characters, after meeting approval by the FBA Commissioner, enter that year's Draft Pool where they will be available to the general managers of the league's 24 teams. During the FBA Draft, a live event that usually happens in September, the general managers choose players one at a time from the Draft Pool, eventually bringing 48 new players into the FBA.

Voting for the Ursa Major Awards for the Best Anthropomorphic Literature and Art of 2011 is now open, and takes place until May 4. The winners will be announced at a presentation ceremony at CaliFur VIII in Irvine, CA on June 2. Anyone may vote, and you are encouraged to ask your friends to vote also — please help spread the word!

There are five nominees in each of eleven categories, except where there was a tie for fifth place. To be eligible, a work must have been released during the calendar year 2011; must include a non-human being given human attributes (anthropomorphic), which can be mental and/or physical; and must receive more than one nomination.

Read on for the nominees . . .

The first collection of Unity comics, Ascent, is available on Amazon.

The science-fiction comic was promoted on Kickstarter as featuring "platypuses in the future", and follows Juni, an environmental engineer who must piece its life together after awaking with memory loss. Also, it lives on an interstellar space arc that has been adrift for millions of years.

The anthology covers 255 strips from February 2007 to February 2010. It costs $4.99 in Kindle format, or $16.99 in paperback.

Read more: Review by crossaffliction

Nominations for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards are now closed. Over 2,020 nominations from 316 nominators were received and are now being tallied.

The final ballot, with the top five nominees in each category, will be announced when voting begins on March 15.

Voting will continue until May 4. The results will be announced and the Awards presented at a ceremony at Califur VIII, at the Irvine Marriott Hotel in Irvine, California on June 2.

FurryMUCK is updating its DNS name to 'furrymuck.com'. The server itself and the IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6) are *not* changing; just the DNS name. Sometime before the end of March the old name (muck.furry.com) will be decommissioned.

The new name: furrymuck.com, port 8888 (or 8899 for SSL)

Please see the FM_Status LiveJournal or @fm_status for more information. Thank you!

Ted R. Blasingame, creator and primary writer of the long-running Blue Horizon series has finished a three-year endeavor to write a new human/furman transformation tale called Sunset of Furmankind.

Completed in September 2011, this 510 page paperback is available through the author's Lulu Press bookstore, for ebook purchase from Lulu, Barnes & Noble, iTunes Books and Amazon.com in ePub and Kindle formats, and on the author's website to read chapter-by-chapter for free.

Follow one man's journey through psychological demons, pain and revelation through an unwanted transformation into the life of a beast destined to explore other worlds.

Nominations for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards, intended to recognize the best works published in the field of anthropomorphics last year, close in just two weeks, on February 29. Nominate now or lose your chance to pick the five finalists in each category.

Voting starts March 15 and closes May 4 (to allow last-minute voting from Morphicon 2012).

The 2011 Awards will be announced and presented in a ceremony at CaliFur VIII in Irvine, CA, June 1–3.

Available awards include Best Motion Picture, Dramatic Short Work or Series, Novel, Short Fiction, Other Literary Work, Graphic Story, Comic Strip, Magazine, Website, Published Illustration, and Game.

If you cannot think of five worthwhile nominees in each category, see the 2011 Recommended Anthropomorphics List for suggestions. Find us now on Facebook!

M.C.A. Hogarth is raising money on Kickstarter for a print edition of her military science fiction serial Spots the Space Marine, featuring the bug-like alien Samuel-Colt and a host of human characters. The book will accompany the existing e-book and serial editions.

The work features alien culture and psychology as well as lots of explosions, cliffhangers, and gun-fights: no straight human vs. bug action here. More like bug-and-human vs. bug.

Money raised is to go towards "cover art, layout; all the things that make a physical book great." Backer reward options include the book or e-book, the author's original notes, and art of floating bug aliens. The project now stands at $625 of its $1500 goal, with 25 backers.

That's right, folks, we need your help! The t-shirts we so adore each year are still blank slates in need of love. We're calling upon all artists, established or not, to submit their artwork for the annual Morphicon t-shirt contest.

Entries must be rated G to PG-13, and must relate to this year's theme, Fables and Furry Tails. The deadline is March 15th and you could win a Patron or Sponsor level registration.

We look forward to seeing what kind of wonderful art you can come up with!