Life got busy and I took a little break from this project, but I'm finally back in a place where I can focus more on maintaining the Archives!
Starting in August, I will have access to a professional scanner that will let me get some lossless/near lossless copies of my personal backlog of comics. Until then I'll continue to upload and catalog scans provided by others! Things should be running much smoother now that I'm on Archive.org, and I'm already moving at a fast pace. Find these and many more titles on my page- and there's much more to come! Bark Bark! Zafy
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Heyo heyo! Just giving a brief update on my progress here
I have a tendency to think too big for my own good on projects I'm passionate about, and while I think the furry fandom desperately needs a searchable database of archived content, I'm definitely not the person to do it (at least not alone) XD As a student with very little tech savvy, I currently don't have the knowledge or resources to do what I envisioned in my last update. I hope to find a community of others who may be interested in oneday helping me with such a herculean task. The archive is not over! I'm just focusing in on a more reasonable amount of work for my current life situation. I'm going to keep this website up as a blog for updates and asides, but content I'm scanning and that's submitted to me will be uploaded just to my Archive.org page. I've been pretty busy lately so sorry for the stall in scanning. I'll be back up again soon! Bark bark! Zafy If you check into the archive regularly, you may have noticed new content slowly trickling in (most of which being retrieved with permission from Furry Times, and a few of my collection I've gotten around to scanning!) But this process has been pretty slow moving due to how I initially organized this website. So I decided to streamline this website's layout a bit, which also means there are some exciting additions coming to the archive! Instead of displaying each work through Weebly , I'm transitioning this site to act more as an aggregate of furry media from all around the internet. My own scans and scans people donate to be hosted will be uploaded on Archive.org (meaning no more requirements to censor NSFW! Hurrah!) But if something your looking for isn't avaliable from Anthropormorphics Archive, the I'll instead link 'ya to where you can find it! This site will then function as a search tool that links not only to my own uploads, but digital uploads of historical furry content from all other archival groups! As of now, archives of furry content are spread around the internet and often difficult to find, and many don't include information like artists, publishers, years, etc in a searchable format. I'm envisioning it as kind of a database the connects all the content dispersed around the web to one navigable place. (In other words, this site will also start linking to other Archive.org uploads, Confurence Archive pages, artist's personal websites, and basically anywhere else that is doing the good work of scanning this content!) I'm probably explaining this poorly, so you can just check it out yourself XD With these new changes, these other works can now be searched for on this website! Hopefully this site will grow to become a helpful tool for you all. I'm going to be working tirelessly to fill this archive with more and more material, so check back in when you can! Bark Bark
Zafy After many requests, I've created a forum on my Contact page where people can submit materials to be hosted on this site!
So far, gathering scans from others has provided access to tons of materials I thought I'd never host due to their rarity. I'm definitely shifting my focus away from only hosting my personal collection, and more towards being a general searchable database. So this is a team effort now! Gimme your scans! Weebly still has it's limitations, but after realizing there's a search bar function that works with page text I think it is my best option short of learning to code XD I dislike not being in control of my website hosting and am worried about suddenly being shut down, but there's not much else I can do right now. Anyways, I'm adding more stuff from Ahmar Wolf's collection constantly (and am getting around to scanning my own stuff too), so check back in every now and then to see what's new! Bark Bark! Zafy Life's been kicking my ass lately, so I haven't had time to take any more scans of my collection. But that doesn't mean I'm not adding things! Awhile ago I ran into this post on Furry Times containing tons of scans of old and new furry material. I've gotten permission from the uploader Ahmar Wolf (who is otherwise unaffiliated with this project) to repost those scans here to further their reach and make them more widely accessible, which is great because there's a HUGE amount of very hard to find stuff here that can finally reach more eyes! I present a small example of what is to come! Though I'll keep uploading on this Weebly site for now, I'm recognizing that my process here is pretty unsustainable. Weebly obviously isn't deigned to host a database so I'm having to do a lot of tedious work to get the gallery to be vaguely navigate-able, but I'd ideally like to introduce the ability to search by tags and keywords. They also prohibit the hosting of sexually explicit content, so I'd have to censor some of this more raunchy incoming stuff with the uncensored versions being available though direct content which is wildly inconvenient. Alas I have no programing skills, so this is how it will continue until I find a program my small mind can understand, or I can pay someone smarter than me to do it for me XD Let me know if you have any suggestions on where I could go from here!
(On the note of me having to do this tedious work, please let me know if I have made any spelling or linking mistakes, and I will fix them ASAP!) EDIT: I've figured out Weebly as a search bar compatible with page text, so you can now search by key words on the Gallery! Right now it just works with all the major details like title, publisher, year, and type, but I will go through and add additional keywords like artists, genre, topics, and more! My first run in with my policy, it seems...
I made a mistake and missed the GIANT problem that Hit the Beach (as well as one of my Furrloughs) are still for sale by the official Radio Comix store. (Thank you to @doronjosama on twitter for letting me know!) So those are down now! I did a cursorily search for them for sale and didn't find the Radio Comix official shop somehow, but that's probably mainly because I wasn't checking too hard because I though there was no way they were still selling there- apparently there is a way XD I have a pretty large collection to go through and of course the first ones I start with happen to be the few that are still for sale lol. So the website looks pretty barren now- but at least I've learned that I need so check harder, because that decades old furry pin-up comic may still be for sale by it's publisher- and my thoughts on copywrite and what deserves to be archived aside, they still might be giving money to the artists, who are the most important person in the room here. Maybe I should just focus on Conbooks haha Now that my stupid self has found the Radio Comix official store it'll be much easier to check, and I can already see not all of my Furrloughs are still for sale on there, so there's hope XD Zafy I've been slowly adding new stuff to the Archives over the last couple of days and waiting until they were all up to do a formal post about them- Welcome to these new additions! I kinda was just picking out of my box really randomly for these XD
This new batch introduced a new set of challenges for me, because a few of these comics are not in great condition: The Aniverse and Furrlough 178 especially (And it didn't help that dog fur dog on the scanner for the first few pages on Aniverse and I didn't notice until I uploaded everything into Acrobat). I'm considering seeking out better quality versions of these comics and rescanning. There's nothing wrong with them that effect the art or readability, but the yellowed pages, scratches, and stains don't look too pleasant lol. If you get a chance, check out those scans and let me know if you think it's worth retrying! I only just noticed that the service I have to use to host PDFs, Scribd, seems to be decreasing their quality pretty significantly too. I'm not sure if there is a way I can fix that while still using Weebly as my base for this website- maybe post individual pages as JPEGs instead of a PDF? But for now if you need a higher quality version of something you can download the full quality PDF directly below the Scribd window! And, sadly, I will have to take a short break from scanning new content for financial reasons :( Right now I am paying to scan these per page, so each comic costs around 10-15 dollars, which is adding up!! I can't find anywhere near me that'd be cheaper, so unless I get lucky with money soon I'll just wait until I move into my college dorm in a month or so and get to use their heavily discounted scanners. It sucks because I've really been having fun scanning stuff so far and I have a lot of cool stuff lined up, but that's just life sometimes. I'll keep you updated if anything changes, bark bark! Zafy Being a Fandom that, especially in its early days, is dominated by white men, some foundational Fandom content is ridden with offensive and insensitive themes. Some subgroups of the Funny Animal Fandom, whose tropes carries into the furry fandom, made content specifically to be as outrageous and inappropriate as possible- while other material was made out of ignorance or indifference to various cultures and social issues. Even the first addition to the Archives, Cutey Bunny, contains some tropes like the fetishism of nazis and facist groups, and other early furry work is littered with offensive content. Most often so far I've seen sexualizing and appropriation of Native American, East Asian, and Middle Eastern culture, callous use of nazi imagery, and making light of slavery and sex trafficking- and the list certainly doesn't end there. (And it's worth noting that these are still issues our Fandom has carried to today!)
I'm reminded of when old Warner Brothers content that contained offensive content was released it was unaltered with a notice at the front recognizing it's insensitivity but highlighting it's historical importance. I'm also aware that the content in these early furry books can be much more offensive than what was in those cartoons. And, while I believe everything I put on the archive has historical importance to the furry fandom, nothing would be nearly as influential as those WB cartoons, and the world would miss much less if there was a pin-up of a culturally inaccurate Native American missing from a PDF here XD So I'm hoping to get some input from the community here; All input is valued, but I especially want input from groups who are targeted by the offensive content. Should I release everything unaltered with a content warning, or should I just not bring that negative content back into the Fandom? (And since some content is far worse than others, a bit of both could be applied.) Or is there another option I'm not seeing? Thank you so much for your comments here, and I will update with what my decision will be. On a brighter note, I've gotten lucky finding some old comics at a big garage sale, so incoming is Hit the Beach and more Cutey Bunny as well as Furrlough, Xanadu, Wild Life and more! (BTW, I have already decided I will not host any pornographic material of characters who are children or feral animals on here if I ever encounter it (luckily haven't yet!)) EDIT: Thank you so much for your input here and on the corresponding Twitter post about this topic. I have decided that offensive content will be posted here unaltered, accompanied by proper content warnings. I'll go through and do those for the few things I have on the Archive so far. Back to the fun stuff! I'm hoping to find a copy of this 1999 zine/comic- Isabella's Tale by Oscar Marcus! This was the first piece of media I ever posted on VintageFur- mainly because it was the comic that got me interested in vintage furry content in the first place! I love the art style and characters so much and would love to see more of them.
But literally the only photos- or any information about it at all- I can find are from this ebay listing by aceantiquethrift, which has already been sold. Haven't seen it for sale anywhere since. So I'm putting out an open call to anyone who has a copy, or may know someone who does! I am looking to purchase it- with cash, obviously, but if you prefer I can trade it for other comics, art, or fursuit parts. Or if you have it and don't want to part with it, we could arrange for me to borrow and return it to scan to the archives. Please contact me on my Contact Page or through Twitter if either of those interest you! I am SERIOUS about this, and will NOT REST until I have located a copy. Adding Isabella's Tale is my life's mission now. Zafy I was about half way through scanning the Anthrocon 2017 conbook when I decieded to give up trying to wrangle my shitty home scanner and just took a trip to FedEx XD
thing in theory, but that came at the exclusion of providing a lot of crucial information about their scanning process. Most notably it doesn't tell you the maximum file size per batch until after you've passed it, and doesn't give you any options to delete a page to get back under it. With only a 60MB maximum file size at the quality I wanted I had to scan in about six small batches in this one trip, which would be less annoying if the darn thing didn't crash every ten minutes forcing me to start over. This FedEx is the closest scanner to me, and as frustrating as it was I'm not sure if other places will be much better. The devil you know...
Anyways! My pain has brought the first actual vintage editions to the archive- Cutey Bunny issues 3 and 5! I feel in love with this gal's design the second I saw her and am hoping to get every comic she's featured in- so far I have these two as well as Uncle Joe's Commie Book featuring Cutey Bunny and the pin-up comic Cutey Bunny's Pearl Harbor Beach Party which will be on the archive soon. (huge thanks to @johnnyb37958136 on twitter for sending those my way!) I have a few Hit the Beaches I wanted to scan today too, but I don't quite have the confidence to proudly walk into FedEx alone and project fox ass onto the little screens there XD. My girlfriend was going to accompany me to make it less awkward but sadly wasn't feeling well, so that's a trip for another day. For now, enjoy these! Bark Bark! Zafy |
Anthropomorphics archive blogHere I post the newest content I'm adding to the archives, as well as general updates and discussion. Archives
March 2022
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