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Voting is open for the 2021 Ursa Major Awards

Edited by Sonious, GreenReaper as of Tue 17 May 2022 - 22:23
Your rating: None Average: 3.4 (11 votes)

The Ursa Major Awards logo.The vote for the 2021 Ursa Major Awards is happening this month! Send them your e-mail address, and you can vote for any of the nominations in 14 categories. Voting closes on Thursday, March 31.

Links to the content in question are provided, some may be for mature audiences. Ursa's Twitter Feed also provides a summary of each of the nominees for the categories.

Spread the word - Please re-post this announcement if you're on an active furry message forum or social media site!

This year's nominees are...

Best Motion Picture
Live-action or animated feature-length movies.

Best Dramatic Short Work
One-shots, advertisements or short videos.

Best Dramatic Series
TV or YouTube series videos.

Best Novel
Written works of 40,000 words or more. Serialized novels qualify only for the year that the final chapter is published.

Best Short Fiction
Stories less than 40,000 words, poetry, and other short written works.

Best Other Literary Work
Story collections, comic collections, graphic novels, non-fiction works, and serialized online stories.

Best Non-Fiction Work
Includes documentaries, opinion pieces, and news articles.

Ursa Major illustrated by Heather Bruton

Best Graphic Story
Includes comic books, and serialized online stories.

Best Comic Strip
Newspaper-style strips, including those with ongoing arcs.

Best Magazine
Edited collections of creative and/or informational works by various people, professional or amateur, published in print or online in written, pictorial or audio-visual form.

  • #ohmurr!, edited by Izzy Torres, aka Weasel. (Internet) Mature Audiences.
  • Dogpatch Press, edited by Patch Packrat. (Internet)
  • Flayrah, edited by GreenReaper, Sonious, and Dronon. (Internet)
  • InFurNation,, edited by Rod O'Riley. (Internet)
  • Zooscape, edited by Mary E. Lowd. (Internet)

Best Published Illustration
Illustrations for books, magazines, convention program books, cover art for such, coffee-table portfolios.

Best Game
Computer or console games, role-playing games, board games.

Best Website
Online collections of art, stories, and other creative and/or informational works. Includes galleries, story archives, directories, blogs, and personal sites.

Best Anthropomorphic Costume (Fursuit)

Good luck to everyone! And if you have the time to vote, why not also e-mail in suggestions for the 2022 Recommended Anthropomorphics List?

Comments

Your rating: None Average: 4 (1 vote)

I am a bit surprised to see The Suicide Squad not get a nomination. I thought maybe it would squeeze in over one of the other movies, like Sing 2 or Wish Dragon. The former because I thought more people had problems with it, the latter because I thought less people knew about or watched that one. But boy, I was mistaken there, wasn't I?

I think there could be a few reasons why this happened though. Maybe the furries didn't take to characters like King Shark the same way they did to Rocket Raccoon. Maybe they didn't like how violent it got. Maybe James Gunn has become a bit of a pariah to some people. Whatever the case, the only disappointment for me is that now we don't an R rated movie competing, as I would've liked to have seen one get a win someday. But maybe it's this day. It really doesn't bother me that much, just would've been nice.

However, there is something I am a bit more unhappy about, and that is the nomination of Nobody Does It Better.

I don't have a problem with K. Garrison or her works. My problem is more that aspect of the animation. Compared to all the other shorts, this one looks like it has the least effort visually. Not saying it's easy to do, but the other ones look vastly more impressive by comparison. I understand that the music is supposed to be more of the draw than the visuals, but it'd be if Thriller or Take On Me only had picture frames rather than their iconic visuals. It's possible to do much better than this. It would make the song seem even more impressive. And I probably wouldn't mind so much if it didn't look like it'll end up winning. But last year, the last short like this was second to ZooPhobia, and none of these shorts have a big name like VivziePop attached. I just think that it would be embarrassing if the short with the least visual effort gets the win over the other shorts that appear to have much more work done.

Your rating: None

*But maybe it’s not this day.

Your rating: None Average: 1 (1 vote)

Forget to log in Crossie?

Your rating: None

I am not Crossie. I loved The Suicide Squad. He hated it.

Your rating: None Average: 2.3 (4 votes)

Yeah, actually, what the fuck, Sonious?

Your rating: None Average: 4 (1 vote)

Well King Shark did rip an opponent in half, (EDIT: and he tried to eat Ratcatcher)
and Weasel's backstory (if i recall correctly) was he had killed some children ...

so neither probably had great appeal to furries.

moving on to Wish Dragon:
i had watched PART of Wish Dragon and enjoyed what i saw, so i may have included Wish Dragon is my Ursa nominations.
But now I've watched more of Wish Dragon and find the restaurant scene to be very painful. The scene where Long telling Din bad advice (After Li Na says she appreciated Din listening to her, but then Long says "ignore her"? Ouch!!! boo!)

Your rating: None Average: 5 (1 vote)

I mean, the children I could forgive, but neither of them are cute enough to appeal. Plus Weasel seems more zoomorphic than anthropomorphic. Who licks prison cell bars?

Your rating: None

I don't have much of a problem with K Garrison's works either. I just wish she wasn't so blatant on the self-promoting for nominations and votes. I saw her say once on Cross Time Cafe that she hoped to "win in every category" and I don't think she was joking. I suspect that the main reason these videos exist is less an organic extension to the comic and more just to win UMAs. IT just feels in bad form, especially form a person who's already won quite a bit.

Your rating: None

*It just feels....from a person...

Your rating: None

It's relatively easy to get nominated for an Ursa Major: you just have to be in the top-five motivated fan-bases (which can be as simple as asking people to nominate you). It's a lot harder to win, because you have to convince everyone else, not just the plurality of those interested enough to nominate someone in the first place.

Your rating: None

The irony when it comes to things like the Ursa's is that though they are mainly intended for people to share the furry content with others, the award aspect of it can be a draw for others to create as well. I know in my younger days I pushed to write short fictions and things in hopes of maybe being rewarded for it, however I found that the three successes on getting published along side Ursa winning talent was good enough for me and as nonfiction took more of my time, I had to put away the fictional persuits.

In the end usually you can tell though when a person is creating from the heart and when they're doing so to win a competition. My works were not as good as the ones that won their Ursas in 2014 and 2015. I would need to push and learn more talents to go to that level.

In the end that means more furry content, even if some strange things get nominated every once in awhile. As long as if they lose the vote to win the main award they use it as an opportunity to self reflect instead of think it's some social political jury rigging, as has happened in the past as well with a few one time nominees.

Your rating: None Average: 1 (1 vote)

The truth is that "awards bait" is often pretty good (I don't think, for instance, last year's movie winner, Wolfwalkers, would even exist without the Oscars), but also I'll agree Kellogg's nominations outside of comic strip are a little ... underwhelming.

Your rating: None

Sorta funny that the same furries who lap up Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel will complain that The Suicide Squad is too dark and violent.

Your rating: None

I would call those two things violent and adult. Not really all that "dark" though, pretty light hearted as far as content goes. Usually when I think of Dark I think more in the lines of Bojack Horsemen or shows with some sort of thread of hopelessness/nihilism.

Your rating: None Average: 1 (2 votes)

I'm going to have to agree with the Anon again, Sonious. It is sorta funny.

And, seriously, my problem with The Suicide Squad wasn't it was dark and violent, though it sometimes seem a bit mean-spirited in the same way my real least-favorite James Gunn movie, Super also did (Helluva Boss has also never seemed that, just, mean). My main complaint is that it really just kind of seemed like James Gunn on autopilot.

As far as my thoughts on The Suicide Squad not being nominated, it is kind of surprising. I think it's kind of both a strong and weak year. I mean, lots of good movies, but none really the one (my feelings on Raya notwithstanding, even it doesn't feel like "the one" for the Ursas). It was a six horse race, I think, and it probably came down to a very few votes. And I have no idea what's winning.

Outside of furry, The Suicide Squad was in the top ten "Oscars Fan Favorite" poll; it was maybe one of the few that seemed legitimately there just because a lot of people liked it. Going the other way, Raya and the Last Dragon ended up being the Rotten Tomatoes's best reviewed animated movie, which is awesome to me, but really doesn't help it at either the Oscars or the Ursas.

Your rating: None

If you'd ask me, a part of me wonders if maybe furries don't like things that are "too" realistic? I noticed that the recent Apes movies, Dawn and War, got a lower number of votes in the past, even with the praise people have given them. I think furries tend to like exaggerated things a lot more.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (1 vote)

Realistic depictions often contain imperfections, and most furries don't seem to like those in their own characters, so perhaps the don't like them in heroes, either.

Your rating: None Average: 1 (1 vote)

Relevant.

Your rating: None Average: 2.5 (2 votes)

Okay, I'm kind of making this about awards in general, but The Mitchells vs. the Machines actually won the Annie Award for Best Feature, as well as the Critics Choice Awards Best Animated Feature. Which definitely puts it in a clear second place for the Oscar, if you're looking to take a long shot bet there in your office pool or whatever (do they even have those for the Oscars anymore, especially in March?). However, Encanto is still the clear front-runner for the Oscar (it did win the BAFTA, which is much more predictive of upsets), which means from a furry perspective the Oscars are kind of a wash, even if there is an upset. Heck, third is probably (also super not-furry) Flee (with it's Ghetto Category Hat Trick triple nomination of Animated, Documentary and International), with Luca fourth (if for no other reason this will be the first time an original Pixar movie has not won the award since 2006's Cars) and Raya in the "just an honor to be nominated" final slot (even though it did wind up being the best reviewed of the bunch).

Your rating: None

Just started playing Chicory: A Colorful Tale on my channel, the game was released in 2021... how many great anthro games were released in 2021 anyway. Good lord, spread it out a bit XD

Your rating: None

I voted! Found three picks in eleven categories. Hope everyone else got around to it. If not, you can still enjoy the nominees. Would've ranked Fuelled higher if she'd made the right choice. 👿

Your rating: None

The thing that took away from Fuelled for me is that the premise doesn't make too much sense. While we at the audience may be able to see the protagonist in an emotional state to the point they forget to gas up, this is contradicted by the map they look at and how planned out everything is.

I am making the assumption that time had passed between when the protagonist's lover was killed and their plot on going out and getting revenge. This means they are not running hot, but cold and calculated. A person who is running cold and calculated does not forget to fill up on the day they enact their long thought out plot to get vengeance against the one who killed their lover.

Sadly that thought hung over my head while watching the rest of the story, which was all a result of this.

Your rating: None Average: 2.5 (2 votes)

But she was broke. She didn't fill up because she forgot to. She didn't fill up earlier with gas because she couldn't.

Your rating: None

If she tried to fill up earlier and realized she was broke, wouldn't she have realize she'd have enough gas to make it before she got stopped in the woods?

She didn't even know she was broke at the time she ran out of gas, because she had to check the wallet when she ran out of gas.

She's going out there to off someone, the last thing you want to do is run out of gas, especially after you kill the person. This is especially true if the target appears to be part of an organized crime syndicate and his boys give chase after you finish the job.

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