2017's been a good year, possibly one of the best of my life. I feel like this is the year all the hard work I put into my art has payed of, and outside of art I feel like the hard work I've put into athletics has taken off, and I finally left middle school and started high school. Looking back at middle school, it was a shit hole. I've also started working my first job, started my first real relationship, and started driver's ed. I feel like I planted seeds in 2016 for what I wanted to do, and that 2017 was the year that those seeds finally began to sprout. I hope that my ability will continue to grow throughout the years, and that maybe I will take up my love for cartooning as a career and earn the athletic scholarship I've been dreaming of to the college of my dreams. 2016's the year I officially recognized myself as a furry (though I've been involved since early 2014) and the year I started taking up drawing as a hobby.

I've realized I've shared fragments of how I joined the furry fandom and got into art and all that, but I've never finished the whole story. So sit back, relax, and enjoy some story time

I've pretty much been interested in computers my whole life. My favorite toy as a todler was for sure the family computer. For my 6th birthday my grandfather who was at the time an IT worker helped me build my own computer. The one thing I really recall wanting to learn to do was program my own video games, and I actually tried so many times, of course never even coming close to finishing.

My dad left to support our troops in Afghanistan in 2009 right around the time I turned 7 because of a financial struggle in the family. My dad came home about twice a year for two weeks, and one of them was always for Christmas. On my 7th Christmas, my dad bought me what I think was still one of the best gifts I ever received, and that was a laptop with the 1 month old Windows 7 operating system.

I loved that thing so much, and I actually did find a way I could create my own games, and that was a website called Scratch. After spending about 3 years on Scratch, I ran into this one Scratcher named Sky-Star, who is actually on DA as SaiMistu When I found her art, I kind of just fell in love with the original characters and realized that Scratch was a very powerful tool.

My dad had returned home for good from Afghanistan in 2013, and only a few months after I found Sky-Star on scratch in 2014, I found out we were moving to a town out in the country. When I started school in the new town, I met lolzipops . I didn't know that there was a name for the furry fandom at the time, but I kind of associated her with all the Scratcher's I had seen. I probably left a pretty bad impression though. Me and her twin brother would try to drive her insane every chance we got.

Fast forwarding a few years after I had been on Scratch for a couple of years I finally found another artist that I really admired named Sharkypup who was at one time registered as Proserpiine on Deviantart, but is unfortunately no longer active. For whatever reason her characters and her art style just left a huge impression of me, and at about 2 in the morning on July 11th 2016 I decided to try drawing some fanart of her OC Kipper. It took 3 trys and I finally decided I had it right. The next morning I scanned the drawing into Paint.net and created what at the time I thought looked okay, and it took me pretty much the whole day to get it right. From there I just continued to create more and more characters. When I started 8th grade after that summer, I started talking to Lolzi more and more, and met one of her best friends Fuzzyfurcat and my locker neighbor named Hannah. Hannah was a fine arts artist and had no ties to the furry fandom what so ever, except for friends who were involved but we really got to know eachother and actually became really close friends by the end of 2016. I also stared talking to OchiyaAlien and Fuzzyfurcat more and more, and we also eventually became really close by 2017. During that time, we started attending an art studio that Hannah worked at, and were invited to go to this small anime/gaming convention. During that time I custom order a furry fandom and managed to find the nerve to wear it in front of my parents, who I had not once mentioned a word about the furry fandom after joining over a year ago. I had started drivers ed, so I was able to drive with my parents in the car, and drove with my dad to the con. Call me a coward, but I chickened out of showing the shirt to my parents, and tried my best to angle myself away from my dad while I was driving there. He of course did notice and said he didn't understand the shirt. I my best to explain it without saying a word about the fandom, but he continued to question it until I told him little bits about it, and explained it just as art. I didn't mention that a furry was also a member of the fandom, or that it even was a fandom. I didn't say a word about my desire to get a fursuit or go to any furcons. I did keep sharing more and more about the fandom though, which was awkward, but felt pretty good.

The last piece of inspiration I want to share is about the first time I met a fursuiter. So I've never really thought to much about fursuiting until the Halloween of 2016. After seeing dozens of suits online, I decided I wanted a fursuit. I never really worked up the nerve to ever tell my parents about fursuiting, mostly because of stigma about fursuiting that was included in one of my dad's favorite shows, Tosh.0 that I really hope he didn't see. When this last Halloween came around just a couple months ago, we went to this Halloween Expo in Lansing. I decided to wear my furry T shirt there just to imply "hey, I'm a furry, and unfortunately I don't own a fursuit. While I was there, I ran into a fursuiter and I broke away from my parents and talked with her a little while. She told me all about cons she's been to, and about how supportive her mother is about it and I thought it was really cool, and kind of fantasized about how cool it would be if my mom was cool with all the fursuiting and furry conventions.

So that pretty much takes me up to now, and I really hope that I will soon get a fursuit, attend some conventions near and far, and hopefully will have support from my family. Thanks for reading and have a Happy New Year! :D

By the way, the characters used in February are Rosco and Opal, and they belong to proserpiiine (Sharkypup)
May is another drawing of one of Sharky's OCs named Orchid
and November is another drawing of one of Sharky's designs named Bee

If you really want to cringe, here's my 2016 summary, and in that one the July Drawing is of Sharkypup's OC Kipper and August is of another one of her OCs named Gwen

https://wolves-star.deviantart.com/.....2016-654231625