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Further Confusion 2007

Friday 19th January:

Definitely a day full of programming, and more scheduled furry activity.

Nuts and Bolts of Fursuiting: This panel covered a lot of the logistics and practical side of fursuiting. Useful, but it would have helped to have a more international input. The perils of US internal flights really aren't that relevant to me.

Dealers Den and Art show: Did try and get into the Dealer's Den when it was supposed to open, but it was running on furry time. When we did get in it was curious to wander around with badgerguy and utlah. I'm not really into the whole "adult" furry art thing. It's good to see that furry art is still evolving, with more and more folks working in different styles and media.

Animatronics Through Radio Control: Hosted by the folks doing the last skit on FNL with the Raccoons dancing in sync, this detailed the techniques they'd used to build and control the animatronic heads and tails. This was held in the Monterey room where the tables had been laid out rather like a mortuary. It was Interesting to see the approach used by someone with a background in RC. Extensive use of styrene for moving parts, and a few other modelling materials that I'll need to check out. At the end of the session tioh and f_u_r_v_a_n brought their animatronic heads down. These made an interesting comparison, being less toony and individual heads rather than the batch of raccoons. The ears were particularly interesting, using a soft structure to allow the ear to deform into realistic shapes. I'm also glad I saw this, as when it came to the skit for Furry Night Live it seemed that none of the technology worked. A great shame.

I think we ate in the coffee garden that evening, which was now on its somewhat disappointing single page con menu. Got a bit of a surprise from the french onion soup. I'd imagined a delicate, refreshing, thin soup with a little cheese on top. What I got had (from the bottom up) a solid mass of onion with a little stock, a half inch of fried bread (token crouton?), another half inch of molten cheese. and on top a huge pile of crisp onion.

Iron Artist: Definitely on furry time now, with the doors opening rather late. I suspect the format of this might have made more sense if I'd ever seen the program Iron Chef, or even heard of the toy Lite Brite. Still it was good entertainment, thanks to Utlah and atpaw for taking me along.

Big surprise on walking past the convention entrance; there's the rave_raffe walking up to the hotel, blasting out the beat and flashing away. I've read about this creation from burning man blogs, but never really expected to see it up close. It really is something iconic, a brilliant bit of eccentricity coupled with American engineering.

Fursuit Dance: I think we missed the actual fursuit dance, having taken the pocket program at face value (Fursuit Dance 8:30pm to Sat 3:00am after the event I found out that the fursuit dance part was only the first hour or so), and overestimated the run-on of the Iron Artist and the time it would take to pick up all the Lite Brite and set up for the dance. Equipped emejn, Badgerguy, and Ed's friend the oh-so-cute Molly (jillarts) with glowy stuff, and headed down. Finally got to see yagfox, rakhan, mr_wolf, dukefawks, timduru, et al. in what I suspect is their natural setting. Stayed around the dance until they started on the drum 'n bass, at which point I think most of the 'suiters gave up. Certainly the fursuit lounge was heaving. Had a good time, with frequent breaks in the lounge, and one trip back to the room to recharge the cool vest (yes, it really can solidify in ice water in less then twenty minutes). Thanks again to folks in the fursuit lounge for providing endless cups of Tang. Its been years since I had Tang, and I had forgotten how sweetly orange it was.