Sunday, May 21, 2017

Fur.artwork.erotica finds #2


I've come to love this kind of naive digital style because of the works of Chris Wayan. It is a style born out of the limitations of the media: there were no handy graphic tablets or sophisticated Photoshop brushes twenty years ago, so digital sketching ought to be hastily done with a mouse and little else. Back in the day I thought the style was just crude and sloppy but it's actually ok for conveying a sense of slight alien-ness. Anatomical research is not a concern in this manner of drawing, yet the source animal is recognizable enough and humanlike features are either pleasantly downplayed (the hands) or prompting a distancing effect (the breast).


Early furry art, much like early sci-fi/fantasy fan art, was full of silly geeky ideas like this one.


Oh man. I remember stumbling upon this very image soon after discovering the furry fandom, and it nearly made me quit in disgust as I had never seen anything like it before, let alone fantasized about it. I still don't find hyper-endowed character very interesting, but now I can appreciate why some people enjoy them. While the inherent lack of harmony in the figure makes them fall easily into the uncanny valley they have a sort of primal quality and raw physical energy which can be very intriguing.

This becomes clear when similar visual themes are exploited by skilled artists for a clear goal, as is the case with the weird hypersexual miniatures of the board game "Kingdom Death: Monster". As a general rule works in the fantasy and horror genres tend to stress the unsettling aspect of supernumeral or inhuman limbs and KD:M is no exception, albeit the artistic quality and consistency it achieves in doing so is off the scale compared to typical fantasy art. Furry art on the other hand is much more likely to spotlight the humorous or charming aspect of such body features, consistently with its basic philosophy of finding good things in non-humanity.

Like the author of the picture above, most furry artists who dealt with hypersexual characters (Doug Winger, Gideon, etc.) have stressed mostly the humorous aspects of the concept, but recent furry artists like Oouna or Darkgem and patron-fans like Zwerewolf or Liquid clearly feel the mythical quality of hypersexual characters too, although their creations are less extreme.


"Odd situation" indeed, subverting one of the most classical cartoon tropes - dogs hating cats hating mice. It could be said that characters like Tom and Jerry endure a love/hate relationship, but barring ridiculous freudian readings there is no trace of sexuality in that cartoon. Furry art as usual adds sexuality to the characters and therefore expands their humorous possibilities a bit. So while a mènage a trois like this would be unthinkable in the context of a typical Hanna & Barbera or Warner Bros cartoon, in the sort of extended context created by fans it becomes a legitimate occasion of absurdist humor like any slapstick duel.

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