Furry auction site FurBuy has added a classified listings service, among other updates, positioning it as a "furry Craigslist". Listings so far include furry identification badges, a skunk suit for sale, and a request for a sewing partner. However, ongoing competition from social art sites has lead to a threat of closure later this year, reminiscent of those made over a decade ago.

Have you ever heard of The Legend of Tembo? It was a new animation feature, the first from a new CGI studio in Port St. Lucie, Florida, Tradition Studios, created by another new company, Digital Domain, to be finished and released during 2014.

In 2009, Digital Domain Media Group received incentive grants worth nearly $70 million from the state and Port St. Lucie to build an approximately 120,000-square-foot, $40 million digital production studio in Tradition. The studio is expected to be complete in December. (2011 press release)

Tradition hired Disney veterans Aaron Blaise and Chuck Williams to direct it. During 2011 and the beginning of 2012, Digital Domain put out a slew of press releases to describe it.

Word has come out of Florida a few days ago that Digital Domain are closing down their new animation studio, Tradition, effective immediately, and will instead focus their California and Vancouver, Canada studios on movie special effects. Tradition was an attempt by Digital Domain (a well-known special effects house created by Stan Winston, Scott Ross, and director James Cameron) to follow in the steps of another FX house, Sony Pictureworks, into the realm of animated features (as Sony did successfully with Open Season, Surf’s Up, and other films). Now, 300 people have been let go in Florida, and — from a furry fan perspective, perhaps another sad thing — work has stopped on The Legend of Tembo, Tradition’s first film, which would have followed the adventures of a young elephant. Cartoon Brew have been following this story closely, so check it out — but be prepared for some harsh words.

image c. 2012 Digital Domain

As Pittsburgh convention Anthrocon approaches this June, many furs are opening up their wallets, counting up their change, and announcing to friends whether they can be expected this year. Unfortunately Fernando's Cafe, a business dear to attendees, have done the same and found that they will be unable to stay afloat until then. The cafe intends to close its doors on April 27.

British comedy puppet series Mongrels has been axed by its television station, BBC3.

The series, described as "Avenue Q meets Family Guy", centred on a troupe of five anthropomorphic animals who hung around the back of a pub on the Isle of Dogs in London.

It appears Earth Eternal is not so, as it was shut down for the second time on November 21^st, 2011 at 9:00PM EST. No reason was cited, but the game's website (and that of its Japanese version, Ikimonogatari), were withdrawn, with an announcement on the project's Facebook page the sole notice — much to the outrage of fans in the comments.

All-ages furry art community ArtSpots is to close January 2, as efforts to create a new site could not be reconciled with the existing one. The move was announced by the official staff persona of Seurat:

These last few weeks planning the future of ArtSpots has been full of great ideas. However, we have wrestled with many roadblocks as well. This site has been around for over five years now, and with that has come a lot of expectations. We have come to the conclusion, sad as it may be, that given ArtSpots original goals and its history, it would be impossible to move forward with these new ideas.

The Yerf historical archive, currently hosted at ArtSpots, is to move to a new site built by WikiFur custodian GreenReaper and hosted by Timduru.

The closure will leave a vacuum in the market for all-ages furry art hosting. Many artists are expected to move to deviantART, where a group has been created for trading-post art.

The RBW boat party on the River Thames will not be happening in 2011, according to an unofficial announcement by Miyabi on the UKfur forums (registration required).

Reasons cited for the cancellation include prior staff commitments and a lack of boat availability on the desired dates.

RBW, once the UK's largest furry convention, was cancelled early this year due to declining attendance. The boat party was originally intended to continue, and Miyabi has confirmed that staff still hope to put it on in 2012.

Arizona furry convention ZonieCon, intended to relaunch in Tucson this September after a decade-long hiatus, has been cancelled.

Chair Scott Malcomson listed various promotion and communication issues – compounded by his Phoenix address, 100 miles away:

As one of the millions of long-term unemployed in this country, [I can't] pay for significant advertising out of pocket. […] Nor have the flyers been moving in any significant numbers. […] There has even been active hostility against the idea of having an Arizona furry convention from other Arizona-based furries. In furry-frequented places where our flyers have been provided, they have subsequently been trashed, and artwork has been posted indicating hostility towards myself.

We were supposed to have an active website up by the end of February […] I was told by one of our core convention staff that they had a qualified volunteer for the website […] March rolled past without any sign of such a website or even any confirmation of who exactly was supposedly working on it. […] Weeks would pass […] We currently have exactly two pre-registrations, and NO hotel room block reservations.

I do not see a future for an Arizona convention which does not have a stronger and more active commitment towards building attendance, or which has a chairman, like myself, unable to provide for its needs. […] ZonieCon is simply not to be.

Thousands of speechless furs stared in shock at their blog feeds early this morning as their favorite annual events bit the dust. All furry conventions worldwide are canceled.

"We are very sorry for the inconvenience and disappointment this will undoubtedly cause to our attendees," reads the parting message from Furry Weekend Atlanta chairman/CEO Tiger Paw, who cited a declining economy as the cause of the convention going under – despite apparent success and relatively favourable media coverage of this year's event just two weeks ago.

All other events are reporting that operations will cease immediately for one reason or another.

The furry community erupted with noise and excitement in response to the news. One long-term fan expressed his frustration: "What shocks the hell out of me," tweets SilverLemur, of Detroit, "is that all conventions threw in the towel at EXACTLY the same time."

Ursula Vernon's 'Digger of Unnecessarily Complex Tunnels' has completed her 759-page journey. [tip: chelImQo']

For the last six months or so, I have been very focused on finally finishing Digger’s unexpectedly epic journey (some of you undoubtedly remember those first five pages, and my constant refrain that I was just doodling and not to get attached!) but I didn’t actually spend much time thinking about what to say once I did.

I guess the only thing to say is “Thank you!”

Digger won the 2005 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards for 'Outstanding Black and White Art', and was nominated for 'Outstanding Anthropomorphic Comic' in 2005 and 2007.

Recent strips will be collected and published by Sofawolf Press as vol. 6 in the series.

Read more: Past reviews of Digger from The Webcomic Overlook and Terrouge

Second-year Wisconsin convention NakamaCon has been cancelled less than three months before launch, according to convention chair Chessie Sutherland. [tip: pmart and SkippyFox]

The replacement website outlines a tale of woe - misprinted flyers, car acccidents, illness, financial shortages and other real life complications:

I realize it is three months from the convention. I know we could make it happen but we'd sacrifice a lot of our own lives to make it work. If any one of these things hadn't happened we might still have a Nakamacon. Collectively, they've led to us being so far behind that recovery is unlikely.

However, the cancellation was followed by allegations by webmaster and payment system maintainer S-Config that Chessie had unilaterally announced her opinion, while local artist Jim Groat claimed the chair "never showed up to any of the meetings."

Portal of Evil (PoE) closed down last week after over a decade of "atrocity tourism".

The site – founded in late 1999 by Cleveland, Ohio-based duo K. Thor Jensen and Chet Faliszek – was a directory of "weird, unusual and evil" websites, each discussed and mocked in turn by PoE forum members. Numerous furry sites were featured, including the website of 2 the Ranting Gryphon (who devoted a rant to PoE), Cub Central, and webcomics such as Sabrina Online.

British furry convention RBW will not be held in 2011, according to an announcement on its Twitter feed. [Markos/FNN]

The group cite a lukewarm response to a three-day residential event in London, and competition from LondonFurs, who host tri-weekly meets.

[...] for the last three years we've been left worrying right up until the last month or two whether we'll have enough attendees to cover the cost of the event. We'd hoped that the successes of previous years would fix that problem, but the number of attendees hasn't changed significantly.

Organizers still intend to run the popular boat party on the Thames, and perhaps other events.

Long-time furry community Furtopia plans to close its hosting service. [Sonious/furryne.ws]
Site owner WhiteShepherd cited cost and loss of support staff as contributing factors.

The closure, effective February, affects hundreds of personal sites hosted on furtopia.org, impacting a number of artists and a mirror of long-running webcomic Fuzzy Things.

Furtopia's forums (attacked two years ago) will not be closing, nor will its IRC server.