Your Guide to the World of Furry Fandom
Robert Aragon is a fine arts painter employed in Hollywood. But in his free time he created his first book, A Tiny Teddy Named Cuds. This little bear is not only a childhood friend, he’s a dreamer: He dreams of a world bigger than his room, and he dreams of being bigger than a little bear. And we follow along with his full-color adventures in his imagination. All of which you can see in the book, which is available at Tiny Teddy Press.
image c. 2014 Robert Aragon
What features the likes of Prozac Bear, Crack Bear, Lech Bear, and Death Bear, among others? Why it’s Bear Nuts, a full-color on-line comic strip by Canadian artist Alison Acton. Surprisingly nice for their many… quirks, these odd bears live in a magical realm where they all learn to get along… and not disgust the neighbors. It’s all part of Studio Dooomcat, an on-line art collective (with prints, t-shirts, and more) started by Alison and Jim Charalampidis. Check out their web site, and follow the links to find the first two volumes of the collected Bear Nuts, available from DMF Comics.
image c. 2014 by Alison Acton
Earlier this year the artist known as Travis Hanson (creator of fantasy comic The Bean) ran a very successful Kickstarter campaign for his new project, Tanner Jones and the Quest for the Monkey Stone. ” Turns out, he more than doubled what he was asking for! So, the new full-color 60-page book will be shipping this June, according to his web site. So what’s it about? “It’s about a boy named Tanner Jones and his adventure to find the Monkey Stone. Something he just can’t do alone, so he enlists the help of the greatest treasure hunters around: The pirate bears of the Scrawny Duck. It’s a journey to an uncharted isle, full of mystery and danger, but most of all just pure fun and the importance of following one’s dreams.”
image c. 2014 by Travis Hanson
Galacticat is a regularly-updated black & white on-line comic story about a cat in space named Wallace… with a little bird named Elpy. It’s written by Gene Goldstein and illustrated by Kasey Williams — and the pair make regular appearances at various comic book and anime conventions. What’s more, the first 10 chapters of Galacticat have been collected in a pair of books, Volume 1 and Volume 2, available on both Amazon and Createspace. There’s information about ordering each of them on the Galacticat web site, as well as the latest pages of the story.
image c. 2014 by Kasey Williams
“Jerome Lu was born in Mountain View and raised in the Bay Area by a family of wild monkeys. Even when he was a small chimp, they could see that he believed every crayon in the box had magical powers, and he would transform blank pages into colorful, fantastic worlds filled with monkeys, ninjas, robots and all his craziest dreams. His wild monkey relations soon recognized his artistic talent and nurtured it with a diet of Skittles and Corn Nuts. They made sure his art education included Saturday morning cartoons and ABC After School Specials. Now that Jerome has grown up to be a big monkey, they are quite proud that his childhood creativity has never diminished. In fact, it has grown, and he is working on his biggest art project to date: Constructing a 20-story ultimate monkey ninja robot.” Got all that? It’s all come together at Hyperactive Monkey, Jerome Lu’s web site of crazy colorful artwork, books, t-shirts, animation, and a whole lot more.
image c. 2014 by Jerome Lu
Frans Vischer grew up using his drawings as a way to communicate after his parents immigrated with him to America from Holland. That practice from an early age won him the sponsorship of animation legend Chuck Jones, an admission to CalArts… and eventually a job in animation for himself. Over the years he’s worked on such films as Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Cat’s Don’t Dance, and The Princess and the Frog. More recently he’s parlayed his talents into his own line of illustrated children’s book. In the first, Jimmy Dabble, a young farm-boy befriends his barnyard animal friends and later saves the day with his unusual method of doing chores. For his second book, Mr. Vischer introduced the world to Fuddles — a proudly over-sized cat, based on the author’s own real-life household companion. He’s also introduced a line of Fuddles prints. You can find them and more at his web site, including a look at his upcoming third book, A Very Fuddles Christmas.
image c. 2014 by Frans Vischer
Psycologist, hypnotist, and philosopher, A.B. Curtiss is also and accomplished author with several award-winning books to her name. And several of her fiction books just happen to be of interest to furry fans. Legend of the Giant Panda (illustrated by Mirto Golino) is exactly what it sounds like: A mythic telling of how pandas got their distinctive black and white markings. Hallelujah, A Cat Comes Back is a “cat book of virtues”, where a young tom gives us the feline wisdom brought down to him from his wise granny-cat. Illustrated with a collection of Victorian feline prints. Dragons Guard The Zoo is a collection of poems on many subjects, including animals real and fanciful. And In the Company of Bears (illustrated by Barbara Stone) has been described as a “children’s philosophy book”, in which bears are used to illustrate soothing rhymes about accepting people for what they are. All of these and more are available on Amazon and at Ms. Curtiss’ web site.
image c. 2014 A.B. Curtiss
Here’s how this artist describes himself: “Matt Doering is an Illustrator/Concept Artist based in Eugene, Oregon currently working as a Production Artist and UI Designer at Disney Interactive for mobile and social games. Matt also works as a freelance illustrator, most recently completing his first children’s book The Story of Magic Kringle, written and created by Alice Cosgrove.” His web site also has numerous examples of his character design work, as well as some of the animation he’s worked on. Of note: Matt did color design and visual development on The Girl and the Fox, an award-winner short animated film written and directed by Tyler J. Kupferer.
image c. 2014 by Matt Doering
The Art Lair is the official web site of writer and artist Jessica C. Feinberg, “a quirky writer and illustrator who is best known for mixing mundane and magic in her paintings of trees, dragons, faeries, and clockwork creatures” (her own words). Dragons seem to be the primary motif here — that is, dragons and the pretty human ladies they seem to hang around with a lot. Jessica has created both illustrations (many available as prints) as well as illustrated books like Dragon Scale: A Guide to Dragons and Dragons in the Library.
image c. 2014 by Jessica C. Feinberg
