Your Guide to the World of Furry Fandom
VanAnnies is the official web site of the artist Annie Dunn. She describes it like this: “This site hosts the BLOG for Chaos Annie, the artist behind Chaos in Color, a fine art shoppe of good humoured magic and mythology.” And lots of full-on portraits of animals in fantasy settings, too. She has a large selection of prints available for most of her work.
image c. 2014 by Annie Dunn
“Sebastien Millon is an artist. His work is noted for its lack of vision and his art is usually muddled in a turbid stew of crockery.” That’s what the artist says about himself! We don’t think you’ll agree if you visit his web site and see his surreal (to put it mildly) collection of art and comic strips. Funny animals abound… often enough, all over you! Some of his more pithy stuff is also available as prints or on t-shirts. Go play outside more often.
image c. 2014 by Sebastien Millon
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
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
[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
Daniel and Dawna Davis, known collectively as Steam Crow, refer to themselves as “a husband and wife team based in Phoenix, Arizona, who make friendly monster-inspired art, prints, books, and other oddities”. With a weird sense of humor and an extreme graphic-arts style to boot. Their books include Caught Creatures, a book of “monster haiku”. You can find that and much more at the Steam Crow web site, as well as a blog updating the latest of what they’re working on — and what’s the next convention or festival they’ll be appearing at.
image c. 2014 Steam Crow
Less than a year after the very first Art of Furry Fandom display opened at the Avant Garden Art Gallery in Santa Ana, California, the furries are back with a new exhibit — open now through the month of April. Once again curated by your own humble ed-otter and Mark Merlino, this year’s display features artwork by Steven Martin, Rivercoon, and Sherwood, as well as photography by Changa Lion. The art went up in time for the monthly Santa Ana Art Walk (every first Saturday), one of the biggest in Orange County, and the place was packed. The Avant Garden is located downstairs in the historic Santora Building (Ground Zero for the Santa Ana Artist Colony area) at 207 North Broadway Santa Ana, CA 92701. Call them at (714) 558-8843 or visit their web site for the gallery hours.
image c. 2014 The Avant Garden
