FC2012 TIMELY REPORT

[gnpg]

Generally in any fandom you go through a progression.  Early on, it's going nuts partying, buying stuff, maybe attending panels. If you stick around long enough, it eventually becomes about hanging out with friends with a relaxed attitude. Maybe you don't even care that much for the fandom at that point, but it's a convenient annual meeting point, and you can still pop your head into the dealer's room and look around briefly. You save your energy and chill.

Peganthyrus is a nice enough person from what I've encountered, but has a better-artistic-aspirations-than-you attitude that comes and goes.  The VCL Sieve, for example.  Given that her animation work was for John K., who's pretty blunt about his opinions toward the fandom, I wonder if it had any effect on her attitude as well.

In terms of fandom associations vs. porn vs. professional career, I've heard mutually conflicting claims. Some folks whose bosses didn't really give a fuck (show up and do your work) and some where it didn't go over well.  I think what employers want is for their employees to get the work done and act professional.  If you've got stuff going on the side, it's best that it stay there, as separate from your day job as possible.  Herbie Bearclaw is an animator who got burned when some of his (pretty tame) porn and beefcake sketches leaked out.  I don't know if anyone remembers when Wookiee/Nakira's adult art on Furnation would occasionally vanish without notice - it's because his brother, a professional animator working on motion pictures, would catch shit over it.  But then I've heard of other part-time furry artists holding down art, animation and illustration jobs with no problem.

On the subject of this year's FC, a really negative con report turned up in this podcast, the segment from 10 minutes in to 33 minutes.  All the people in the podcast are Furry Fiesta staffers. Kyo (the one giving the report) is the most annoying and useless contributor of them all - but he really surprised me here by being more informative and coherent than pretty much everything he's said in the last dozen podcast episodes combined. Not counting the episodes where he was away, which were blissful.  It's good to hear he's got a critical mind, when he makes the effort to turn off the twink.  The podcasters don't seem to be aware that the problems mostly stem from FC's staff turnover policy.

(Edit: added link to brother)

[greaseyote]

FC guys gave the Hilton the special otter rape keys to give out to con attendees, but apparently did not bother to find out that the Hilton's key slots were an irregular size. So the keys were useless and the con ended up just giving them out as free swag.

I really, truly and seriously want to know whose brilliant fucking idea this was. Barring that, I really want to know how much money was wasted doing this - it can't have been cheap.

They have made special furry key cards in years past and while I don't know the exact cost of having the cards printed, a quick google search for "custom key cards" seems to indicate that there are many companies that do this and that it's a common and inexpensive way to spice up your special event.

[Jim Demintia]

Isn't being a Hollywood animator sort of like working in Silicon Valley is for computer people? Everyone wants to do it (or thinks they do, at some point), from some shallow perspective it could be considered the zenith of career aspirations to work, e.g. for Google, but in the broad scheme of things not a lot of people do it or ever will. For everybody who knows someone in the Valley there's a dozen more people working at tiny software firms in the Midwest, working at government labs in NoVA, and administering data centers and writing J2EE for Fortune 500 companies.

I guess I don't understand holding up the standards of the entertainment industry as the code of conduct for artists when, all told, many people will never work there.

[ProvincialTwit]

I suppose you could go with the idea that, if you're 'good enough' to actually land one of the few-and-far-between jobs in the professional animation/illustration sectors, then you're 'good enough' that your employer doesn't care what else you've done on the side.

Consequently because it's such a narrow and competitive job market, it's entirely possible that having been a part of the 'furry thing' could be one of those easy toss-this-resume flags.