Your Guide to the World of Furry Fandom
Cynthia Petrovic is an artist and illustrator who has worked as a story-board artist at places like Warner Brothers Television Animation. Branching out on her own, she created a line of artwork and other products called Red Tango, based around her fascination for critters — especially rather slim and stylized felines. She has a very animated interactive web page that includes not only her current products but also samples of her story-board work.
image c. 2014 by Cynthia Petrovic
Taking a cue from the life and work of Jim Henson (who else?), Gordon Smuder and his associates formed The Puppet Forge back in 2001 to make and perform with puppets for a variety television and other media projects. Since then they’ve appeared in commercials for the Minnesota State Lottery, The Choo Choo Bob Show, Transylvania Television, John Kovalic’s The Dork Tower Project, and many other places. They also travel the land to various fandom conventions to sell puppets and teach about puppetry. Their web site has much more — and a plethora of pictures. Like this one…
image c. 2014 The Puppet Forge
Okay, this gets complicated, so follow along: Shiprock & Achordog is the name of an acoustic band that specializes in using music and lyrics (even rap!) to educated children about animals. It’s also the name of a comic book series they have created following the adventures of two dogs with that same name, Shiprock & Anchordog. In their first adventure, the canine companions travel back in time and befriend a family of dinosaurs. The band’s official web site explains it all more fully, as well as other educational programs they’re involved in. The comic was written by Evan Curran and illustrated by Gregery Miller, who also has his own web site devoted to this and other illustration projects (which he seems to have a lot of!).
image c. 2014 by Gregery Miller
Talk about a well-rounded Artist! Zoe Moss is a graduate of CalArts in Southern California who now works as an artist, experimental animator, character designer, storyboard artist, puppet fabricator, and voice actor. (Oh is THAT all??) Her humor is on display regularly at Pizza Day Comics, which has also recently been gathered into a comic book. Then there’s her main web site, with the unlikely title of Brainfarto. Yes really.
image c. 2014 by Zoe Moss
Imagine if your fur-suit was not just a costume, but was actually a super-powered alien that molds itself around your body, giving you super powers too! Of course, it complicates matters when the leader of your super-hero team is also “frenemies” with the super-villain! That, in a nutshell, is the idea behind Zoodorables, a line of clothing, toys, and artwork created by Han L. Lee. The Zoodorables web site features the current products, as well as updates on a possible Zoodorables game and some animation in the works.
image c. 2014 by Han L. Lee
[May the Fourth be with you! Chewbacca lives!]
More artists discovered at WonderCon (there were quite a few!). Jackie Huang is a fine artist and sculptor who does amazing things with cut and folded paper. This is what is meant by cartoon art, people! As you can see from Jamie’s personal web site, Jamie does a lot of work involving Disney characters too. Even pop-up books! Talk about a lost art. Go check out Jackie’s portfolio.
image c. 2014 by Jackie Huang
Betsy Bauer is a fine artist and character designer. In addition to various gallery shows, she worked at Sony Pictures Animation creating characters for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and her own short film proposal, Bookworm. She has a very active web site (showing her finished works and also several steps along the way), as well as displaying her works on Deviant Art. Spend some time looking things over (many different kinds of things!) in her portfolio.
image c. 2014 by Betsy Bauer
