# Walt Disney...first modern Furry?



## Ty Vulpine (Jul 4, 2008)

I was just thinking. Was Disney the first "modern" Furry? Look at all he did: Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Minnie, Daisy, Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Pluto, etc plus the "furry" movies: Dumbo, Robin Hood, The Aristocats, even Cinderella had talking animals and Peter Pan, the Lost Boys dressed in fursuits. Interesting theory (though may just be coincidence...)


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## Hybrid Project Alpha (Jul 4, 2008)

No doubt a large portion of the fandom were influenced by his work


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## Ne0nie (Jul 4, 2008)

This definitely has some merit to it and may very well be true. But in that day and age people may still not have known what a furry is, so where as today he could very well be considered one, in his era, he was just considered a guy who made talking animal cartoons. Same goes for the guy who came up with the Loony Tunes.


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## Ty Vulpine (Jul 4, 2008)

Ne0nie said:


> This definitely has some merit to it and may very well be true. But in that day and age people may still not have known what a furry is, so where as today he could very well be considered one, in his era, he was just considered a guy who made talking animal cartoons. Same goes for the guy who came up with the Loony Tunes.



Tex Avery? Yeah...


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## SachiCoon (Jul 4, 2008)

I doubt Walt himself was a furry, but he was without a doubt an animal lover and a great portion of his work was inspired by that.


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## Lukealyke (Jul 4, 2008)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mypa-rmn5GE

^ used to be my favorite scene when i was little... what was wrong with me?


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## Ty Vulpine (Jul 4, 2008)

Lukealyke said:


> http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mypa-rmn5GE
> 
> ^ used to be my favorite scene when i was little... what was wrong with me?



Actually, one of my favorite scenes too when I was growing up.


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## DragonFoxDemon (Jul 4, 2008)

TyVulpine said:


> Tex Avery? Yeah...



Chuck Jones


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## Ty Vulpine (Jul 4, 2008)

DragonFoxDemon said:


> Chuck Jones



According to Wikipedia, Avery created Bugs Bunny and company...Chuck Jones was the producer.


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## Lucas (Jul 4, 2008)

That Pinocchio clip was disturbing. I remember it from being a kid too. Anyone want a cigar?

I've heard people debating is Disney was a furry. Honestly, I agree with what was already said here. I think he could have been considered one but it wasn't during his era. If he were alive today, more rather, if he was younger, he probably would have been one.


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## Snickers (Jul 5, 2008)

I wouldnt go labelling people furries, its a rather self identification thing, something only the user can decide. OMG LOLZ HE MUST LIKE ANIMALSZ=furry. Its kinda insultive.


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## Khim (Jul 5, 2008)

thats what you wanted to believe, you know, before disney, many artist made paintings of animal doing human activities and some of them wearing clothes, why? because they wanted to make this suitable for children and they didnt knew it was furry cuz all this furry thing never existed before and i bet Disney also never thought of it, ppl like you  named that furry cuz it has an animal with human characteristic, dont force to categorize something when it was for other uses =)


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## Ne0nie (Jul 5, 2008)

Snickers said:


> I wouldnt go labelling people furries, its a rather self identification thing, something only the user can decide. OMG LOLZ HE MUST LIKE ANIMALSZ=furry. Its kinda insultive.



I still disagree being a furry is strictly self identification. You can DENY being a furry sure, you have that right, but sometimes I see people who claim "I'm not a furry" and yet their on a furry site, making furry drawings, posting in the furry sites journals and talking with furries. To me, that's like a gay guy trying to deny he's a homosexual with the cock in his mouth.


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## Snickers (Jul 5, 2008)

Furry isnt always black and white you know? There are cases in were it can be obvious though, i understand.Thats my point


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## Wolf-Bone (Jul 5, 2008)

While it's undeniable that at least early on in the fandom, funny animal cartoons _like_ those of Disney were a major inspiration, that doesn't necessarily mean the artists who created such characters are/were "inspired" by the exact same things as furries, either as individuals or as a group. With old school, 2D, hand-drawn animation, well it goes without saying that's a lot of drawing, and that's even if by some miracle you don't have to do a bunch of revisions, which there almost always are for newer animators and even the best animator in the world can't be guaranteed to never make a mistake or always know _exactly_ what their director is aiming for. So to save wrists, headaches, and more importantly time and money, you want characters that are not only pretty easy to draw, but can be drawn *fast*, lend themselves well to exaggeration and make it easy for the viewer to suspend their disbelief.

Yeah, Disney and Warner Bros. had a lot of animal characters, but really, how _human_ did their human characters look? But you accept them as being human when you watch them, right? But don't the animal characters pretty much act human too? That's supposed to be the entire _point_. Generally, we tend to set a higher subconscious standard when we know what we're seeing is _supposed_ to be a human, and the more detailed it is, the closer to perfection it has to be to be believable. The visual differences between all the characters also need to be immediately obvious. The more human characters you have, the more detail that requires, which takes more time and effort (and stress and money), not to mention you still need to have them all the same style so they look like they belong in the same world. With non-human characters, you can get away with a lot more. You've got way more artistic license to play with between two or more characters of the same species (Pinky & The Brain for example. how many real mice look _that_ different from one another?) and and tonnes of other species to choose from for even _more_ possible character designs. And besides, shouldn't the point of animation be to show people what they _can't_ see in real life? (without taking _a lot_ of acid that is.)

tl;dr version: Yes, Disney and people like him loved animals and were inspired by them, but they were _artists_. They looked for inspiration _everywhere_, and that's why they were good at what they did. They were fans of art and animation, I guess, but they weren't necessarily fans of that one particular subject. They just knew it worked and why and so they did the smart thing and used it. Disney was no more a furry than Gene Roddenberry was a Trekkie.

Also, does anyone else follow what critics say about CG as much as I do? Is it just me, or do they tend to be a lot kinder to CG animal characters like the ones in Narnia, Golden Compass and especially not-even-_trying_-to-be-realistic ones like in Kung Fu Panda than say, Beowulf or The Incredible Hulk?


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## That_Emo_Guy (Jul 5, 2008)

Nah he's not a furry, his work isn't yiffy enough.


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## Monak (Jul 5, 2008)

Of course , as we learned from family guy he used to get drunk and make minnie mouse strip


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## Dyluck (Jul 5, 2008)

He wasn't a furry unless he was secretly masturbating to his cartoons.


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## Ne0nie (Jul 5, 2008)

David M. Awesome said:


> He wasn't a furry unless he was secretly masturbating to his cartoons.



Could be disputable.


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## Wolf-Bone (Jul 5, 2008)

Well there _are_ stories about how he had a lot of difficulty getting his wife pregnant, but the main source of that is a guy who wrote what many consider to be the first modern example of yellow journalism, and no one seems to be quite sure what his motives were, so he could've just been making shit up out of some personal vendetta against Walt or just wanted to get rich/famous at someone else's expense. Even if it's true though, he smoked five packs of cigarettes _a day_, so it's no wonder.


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## Ty Vulpine (Jul 5, 2008)

David M. Awesome said:


> He wasn't a furry unless he was secretly masturbating to his cartoons.



Well, one urban legend is that two cartoonists created a "special" Mickey and Minnie short "celebrating" Walt's birthday, and when he saw it, he asked who had made it, the two came forward. He promptly fired them and then left.


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## Lucas (Jul 5, 2008)

I don't exactly agree with that fully. I don't think sex really decides furry or not. I've met plenty of furs who where not into yiff. For me, although I do like yiff, furry is a fandom of anthropomorphics. Yiff can be included in that but I don't really think he had to have sexual desires to be a furry. But I guess for some it is just a sex thing sadly.


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## Wolf-Bone (Jul 5, 2008)

TyVulpine said:
			
		

> Well, one urban legend is that two cartoonists created a "special" Mickey and Minnie short "celebrating" Walt's birthday, and when he saw it, he asked who had made it, the two came forward. He promptly fired them and then left.



I'm aware of that "urban legend" and iirc its origin is the exact same source I was referring to. There's _a lot_ of such legends about Walt Disney, among them how he fired people for being gay and called one animator a fag because they studied dancing, as well as one about how one employee told him another was gay and Walt actually more or less defended him. Now, unless he had multiple personalities or something, it's pretty unlikely both of those are true.

Really, the only thing anyone can say about Walt Disney as a person, with any certainty is that he had a passion for art, animation, storytelling and entertaining children and families, and that he was damned good at what he did.


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## Nocturne (Jul 5, 2008)

Disney created and voiced mickey mouse originally, didn't he?  Mickey Mouse was his fursona.  Mickey was anthropomorphic, most definitely.

Most of all, it was an anthropomorphic mouse with a non-anthropomorphic dog as a pet.  He's a furry.


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## Ty Vulpine (Jul 5, 2008)

Nocturne said:


> Disney created and voiced mickey mouse originally, didn't he?  Mickey Mouse was his fursona.  Mickey was anthropomorphic, most definitely.
> 
> Most of all, it was an anthropomorphic mouse with a non-anthropomorphic dog as a pet.  He's a furry.



That's another thing I've never figured out. Why is Goofy an anthro dog, but not Pluto?


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## Nocturne (Jul 5, 2008)

TyVulpine said:


> That's another thing I've never figured out. Why is Goofy an anthro dog, but not Pluto?



Just to make it extra obvious that they are furries.  This clinches it.


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## DragonFoxDemon (Jul 5, 2008)

TyVulpine said:


> According to Wikipedia, Avery created Bugs Bunny and company...Chuck Jones was the producer.



Interesting. I normally associate Avery with other cartoons rather then the Looney group. Thanks for pointing it out.


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## pheonix (Jul 6, 2008)

whether he was or wasn't  some of his cartoons influenced me as a furry so I have to point more toured that he was a furry.(loved fox and the hound and robin hood.)


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## NeoWyverdramon (Jul 6, 2008)

Well, I never thought of that scene in Pinocchio like that before. Its like a transformation fetish and anthro/furry fetish all wrapped up in one. Not to mention it'd probably scare some little kid senseless.


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## eternal_flare (Jul 6, 2008)

I guess the word "furry" itself wasn't even defined in his days...or was it?


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## Renton Whitetail (Jul 6, 2008)

That is an interesting thought, but like Ne0nie said, you'd have to consider that the furry fandom itself wasn't very well known back then until long after Walt's death.  Sure, he was a big influence and innovation for the fandom based on his characters, but I kind of doubt that he himself was a part of the fandom. Rather, he was someone who wanted to entertain children and families with his own artistic visions and ideas through his films and theme parks, and he did that, leaving behind a great legacy for people all over the world.


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## Anbessa (Jul 6, 2008)

thing is, if you create cartoons, it's easier to tell your stories with animal characters. remember all your children's books full with animals that act human-ish? to call the authors "furry" would lead too far mostly. fairy-tales with talking animals are found throughout human history.
thing is, most humans don't take it too well to have a mirror held out before them, showing how much of a failure they are. if you use some funny animals you can't even insult a king, since those are animals, not humans!

Disney was dedicated, granted, but a furry? because he used what people have used all the time? I don't think so.

there is a stop-motion movie from right before WW1, produced in france, titled "Armand de Reynard" if I recall right. not sure about it, since I only heard of it firsthand. the tale is interesting, a little bit violent, and full of talking animals. I recommend everyone digging for it. unfortunately german DVD market has yet to publish it...

it's hard to say who was first with anything like this. many movies and illustrated  stories are lost, or not recognized. for example, german Author, artist and general rhyme-smith, Wilhelm Busch, has created a couple rhymed stories for children and adults which feature animals as their main characters, and he illustrated them nicely himself.
long before Disney.


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## Ty Vulpine (Jul 6, 2008)

Anbessa said:


> thing is, if you create cartoons, it's easier to tell your stories with animal characters. remember all your children's books full with animals that act human-ish? to call the authors "furry" would lead too far mostly. fairy-tales with talking animals are found throughout human history.
> thing is, most humans don't take it too well to have a mirror held out before them, showing how much of a failure they are. if you use some funny animals you can't even insult a king, since those are animals, not humans!
> 
> Disney was dedicated, granted, but a furry? because he used what people have used all the time? I don't think so.
> ...



There are different levels of Furry-ism, from the simple liking talking animals (light end) to dressing up like one and yiffing (deep end). I think Disney was more to the light end.


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## virus (Jul 6, 2008)

You all think too much. I doubt Disney was one, its just extremely ambiguous.
I freaking hate disney world, they emphasize too much on >THEIR< characters like it should be embedded into everyone else's heads. There good characters as a kid but too soft for adults.. unless your one screwed up adult.
That's why Tex Avery was around and his more adult oriented cartoons. No doubt in my mind he had quite an idea what he was doing. Tex was a perv.


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## Ne0nie (Jul 6, 2008)

virus said:


> You all think too much. I doubt Disney was one, its just extremely ambiguous.
> I freaking hate disney world, they emphasize too much on >THEIR< characters like it should be embedded into everyone else's heads. There good characters as a kid but too soft for adults.. unless your one screwed up adult.
> That's why Tex Avery was around and his more adult oriented cartoons. No doubt in my mind he had quite an idea what he was doing. Tex was a perv.



Becuase *DISNEY* world should not emphisize on *DISNEY*characters.


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## virus (Jul 6, 2008)

Ne0nie said:


> Becuase *DISNEY* world should not emphisize on *DISNEY*characters.



I was talking outside of disney. The magical world of Disney isn't too far away from being fascist. Think about it, they create characters - whore them out and at the same time glue you to them so that that's the only character in existence. So you can never use your own imagination to create your own characters. Instead you create "fan" characters which revolve in the disney world. Seig Heil Disney! The only deity we shall follow.

>humor me<


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## Nightingalle (Jul 6, 2008)

Snickers said:


> I wouldnt go labelling people furries, its a rather self identification thing, something only the user can decide. OMG LOLZ HE MUST LIKE ANIMALSZ=furry. Its kinda insultive.



I agree with this, labeling=bad. >_<


That being said, I don't believe Walt Disney was a furry.


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