After a successful crowd funding campaign, the virtual face motion-capture software Facerig has gone on beta release on Steam for around £10. Although not exclusively a furry piece of kit, the inclusion of at least 5 different anthro and feral animal avatars to pick and customise from at the base level is an interesting note in how the fandom’s presence is beginning to move out of the shadows.
The main avatar that Facerig promoted its kit with on screenshots and clips for majority of the development was a red panda avatar. It immediately led to speculation that the Romanian development team behind the project must have a member of the community in its ranks. Surprisingly this turned out to be untrue, it appears that they have just noted the potential in the market to include anthro avatars.
The fandom itself has also begun to fund its own creative endeavours on crowd funding sites, with Fox Amoore’s Come Find Me and Alector Fencer’s Myre among the successful projects. The possibilities are potentially endless, even yours truly may find himself venturing on a crowd funding project at some point in the future.
Why bring those up, well Facerig demonstrates that furries can be a successful target audience for outside companies. While within the fandom, some of these large creative crowd funded projects could eventually lead to furry’s first canonical media.
In his video “The Future of Furry Fandom” (http://youtu.be/lwhTihZ3lRI), Camo discussed the possibility that as the fandom grows larger and more regional, viral and canonical media within the fandom may become essential to keep a core. While some media could be argued as that already, I would liked to think that we would not lose that vital component of being “fans of one another” which can really inspire self confidence and unlock hidden potential in people.
I also agree with Camo that the fandom will be generally accepted in the long term, and recent media reporting from Anthrocon and Eurofurence show a welcome move toward that direction. However the fandom’s PR should still be carefully managed at this stage, with media made by the community designed to engage with a wider audience, as well as the current selective media management many cons are involved in on behalf of its attendees and wider community.
As the numbers in our fandom continue to rise, and more cons start-up, the possibility of a fragmentation of furry is possible, however I hope that anyone in the fandom with a good idea will be able to achieve it and that we won’t lose that feeling that we’re all in this together on a level playing field.
Another more in-depth post on where the fandom could be headed is likely to be on cards sometime, however for now I wanted to reflect on where we are at this moment.
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