One Thousand Nine Hundred And Eighty Imaginary Animals Brought To Life
July 13, 2018 8:59 PM   Subscribe

Anthrocon 2018, the biggest furry convention in the world, happened last weekend. The official fursuit photo has been released, featuring 1980 fursuiters. Here's the original resolution of the photo, 14920 x 4077 if you want to truly study the details. Here's 500 x 137 so you can click a link and not kill your device and find a menu of other sizes above the picture.

There are also videos of the fursuit parade posted to YouTube.
posted by hippybear (29 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Curious - what's the ratio of suited attendees to those not in suits. As in, when they have the parade, is the show floor just dead or are there plenty of non-suited people there to watch?
posted by thecjm at 9:07 PM on July 13, 2018


I didn't expect to find this straightforward of an answer, but here it is. Long story short: Last year 25% of attendees were wearing suits.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:12 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]




Front and center is a dog dressed as a lion.

Plus all the kids in partial suits! I love it!
posted by gc at 9:15 PM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


*I'll just click the full size photo and scroll around a bit and...woah is that a Sriracha bottle?*

I found a couple more pictures of that, also here and deflated and in bed (@BirchDeerWolf on Twitter is apparently who brought it).
posted by zachlipton at 9:37 PM on July 13, 2018


That is a lot of furries.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:47 PM on July 13, 2018


thhecjm, whatever part of the con the fursuit parade is going through tends to be dead, but that’s mostly because everyone who’s not in it just ends up on the sides watching it. And there’s enough people for pretty much the whole route to have folks a couple deep on either side for most of its length.

In the dealers room there is always a mix of dealers bitching that OH NO sales grind to a halt for a WHOLE HOUR on one of the last days of the con, and dealers who are all like, dude, chill out and relax and enjoy the fact that your job includes a fursuit parade. I am pretty sure I was the former at one point but I’m definitely the latter now.
posted by egypturnash at 9:48 PM on July 13, 2018 [8 favorites]


It's thrilling and mind-numbing to walk into a room with that many fursuiters. And to walk into a dance at midnight with even a minor cross-section of those on the dance floor makes my feet leave the ground a couple of inches.

There were many more furries at the convention than were just in that photo. Those were just the ones with at least a partial fursuit.
posted by hippybear at 9:49 PM on July 13, 2018


I see a dalmatian wearing a tshirt that reads "Cruella de Vil Survivors Support Group".
posted by traveler_ at 10:05 PM on July 13, 2018 [15 favorites]


For closeups of the suits, here's a link to Instagram posts tagged #anthrocon
posted by roger ackroyd at 10:05 PM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


I think I might like to go one year, and take in a Pirates game at PNC Park while I'm at it. Not a furry, but I understand the general bonhomie means almost everyone who attends is in for a good time. And PNC Park is supposedly the most beautiful and pleasant ballpark in the USA. My wife is game, too, she's a counter-culture aficionado, tho she's looking forward to reading a nice novel in interesting surrounds rather than the ballgame.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:06 PM on July 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


But the really important question: was Boozy Badger there?
posted by corb at 12:56 AM on July 14, 2018 [7 favorites]


I scrolled through this for ages and kept stopping to point out stuff to my other half - deadpool! Pikachu! Someone dressed as a grasshopper, or possibly mantis. The dog in the lion suit! The fennec fox with the huge ears! I'd love to go one day but I have no temperature regulation whatsoever so you won't catch me in a fur suit.
posted by stillnocturnal at 3:36 AM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


woah is that a Sriracha bottle?*

Before I clicked through I thought someone's fursona was a Sriranch bottle.
posted by sebastienbailard at 3:50 AM on July 14, 2018 [13 favorites]


Is there a furry costume industry? The images I've seen, virtually all the suits seem very professionally, and somewhat uniformly cartoon like level quality construction. Also (very understandabaly) they see very static, a head that could wink would be so much fun or a wolf mask that had an actuator for a grin. The harness for a functional tail would be heavy and constricting but would win any contests.
posted by sammyo at 5:17 AM on July 14, 2018


I found Waldo!
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:09 AM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


sanmyo: Yes, professional fursuit makers is A Thing. A lot of these suits (if professionally made) cost several thousand dollars.

A lot of fursuit heads these days have jaws that move when the human wearing it moves their jaw, so there is some semblance of mouth-moving-for-speaking happening. Many fursuits are built with concave eyes which have this effect of moving to look at you as the head turns. I've seen fursuits with screens for eyes so there is movement and blinking programmed in. There are plans for tails that can move and the entire device is much more lightweight than you might imagine.

But yes, many fursuits might have the moving jaws and nothing else that is dynamic, and even that is probably not a majority. Fursuiters have to rely on their larger physical performance skills to bring their characters to fuller life beyond the artistry of the fursuit makers.
posted by hippybear at 6:20 AM on July 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


Oh, and yes Boozy Badger was at AC this year. I don't know if he's in suit in this photo, but he did several panel presentations. His twitter has several mentions of this as well of other things at the con he was eager to promote.

He seems to be having a lot of fun with his unexpected mid-life hobby.
posted by hippybear at 6:22 AM on July 14, 2018 [9 favorites]


The shark always makes me smile.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:02 AM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


My favorite thing about Anthrocon is how much Pittsburgh loves Anthrocon.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:07 AM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


a particular Nazi Fur comedian

This is a phrase that raises a lot of questions. Are there a variety of Nazi Fur comedians? Are there that many Nazi fur enthusiasts? I realize the answers are unlikely to make me happy.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:25 AM on July 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


Some googling later:

For fucks sake, people.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:29 AM on July 14, 2018 [18 favorites]


You know, I read one article off of Metafilter on the ethics and moral framework in the BDSM community and my Facebook page was inundated with ads for bondage equipment. I read dozens of articles on furries, and not one ad for Jo Ann Fabrics.
posted by acrasis at 8:42 AM on July 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


I went to the parade for the first time this year and it was excellent. The energy down there was amazing. Slothpool was one of my faves, but there were so many fantastic getups that by the end of it my eyes were definitely feeling full. Definitely planning on going again.
posted by miratime at 10:54 AM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


Is there a furry costume industry?

There is, and much like any other industry, some vendors are more reputable than others. Recently, it was reported that the 12-year-old daughter of one of the singers from Insane Clown Posse had purchased a fursuit that was allegedly much lower quality than she was lead to expect that she would be getting from the images shown on the website she purchased it from. Violent J and his daughter Ruby were inspired by this incident to make an online video series on consumer advocacy. Gizmodo recently had an article about it, and it may just be the most heartwarming story about cross-generational family bonding over being parts of different-but-both-internet-marginalized subcultures that I've read all week. The father's even making his own foxsona and is going to get a suit of his own so that he can share in his daughter's interests.

Getting back to the main topic of this post, the Pittsburgh City Paper changed its masthead on last week's issue to the Furry Paper instead.
posted by radwolf76 at 5:42 PM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


My partner and I had a great time watching the fursuit parade, just as we did last year. The parade is well attended by the general Pittsburgh public - we love our annual furry visitors.

(My parade pics are here, and my partner's here, if anyone wants Yet More Furry Content.) (But no, his Hello Kitty ears in his avatar aren't actually about being a furry. Those are his Thinking Ears. It's a long story.)
posted by Stacey at 4:59 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Fursuiters have to rely on their larger physical performance skills to bring their characters to fuller life beyond the artistry of the fursuit makers.

My first thought was this was a hobby version of what Disney park mascots get paid to do, but then I considered, fursuit-capable furries probably form a large employment pool for them. I imagine mime training would be useful for that.
posted by JHarris at 2:24 PM on July 15, 2018


My first thought was this was a hobby version of what Disney park mascots get paid to do, but then I considered, fursuit-capable furries probably form a large employment pool for them.

Disney historian and blogger Foxxfur (previously on MeFi), wrote an article a few years back that contends that Walt Disney World was crucial in the formation of the earliest versions of the Furry Fandom Community in the 70s and 80s, before the advent of widespread digital communication or even the advent of the term "Furry" itself:
How did furries organize enough to start developing 'zines by the late 70s and conventions by the early 80s? In the pre internet world how did enough people find each other with an interest that's always been sort of an awkward secret? Well, we can thank Disney for that too.

... anyone who was young, clean shaven, and enthusiastic could get a job at Disneyland or Walt Disney World and if if your particular dream was to wear an animal costume, then Disney needed you even more. It was a mecca for young men with a certain set of interests, literally the only place you could be paid to dress up as characters like Robin Hood. ...

The Furry community coalesced from there, out of these pockets of like-minded individuals who found themselves doing the same thing for the same reason at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. It's no big secret in Orlando that the city is a prominent Furry Community hub, and one of those reasons is because, them as now, people move across the country for an opportunity to get paid for wearing a Pluto suit.

posted by radwolf76 at 4:09 PM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


Are there a variety of Nazi Fur comedians? Are there that many Nazi fur enthusiasts? I realize the answers are unlikely to make me happy.

---

Some googling later:

For fucks sake, people.


If civilization ever does actually fall apart, I'm pretty sure thriving communities of Nazi fur enthusiasts will be listed under "omens we probably should have listened to."
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:40 PM on July 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


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