Wolfie Rankin
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| Wolfie Rankin | |
|---|---|
 Wolfie's Avatar | |
| Other names | Wolfie! |
| Born | 1965 |
| Profession or hobby | DJ |
| Species | Werewolf |
| Website | * Wolfie Rankin on Facebook
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Wolfie Rankin (born 1965) is a werewolf (therianthrope) from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He is usually called Wolfie!, having used that name as early as 1986, and is mostly known for his activities on the Second Life simulation.
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[edit] The Radio Wolf
After leaving High School in 1985, Wolfie briefly studied at The School of Audio Engineering in St. Kilda, Victoria.
But soon joined "The Radio Works", A School for Radio Announcers, in South Melbourne, Where he studied the basics of working as a DJ.
Upon leaving, He joined a public radio station in Melton, Victoria called 3 RIM-FM (Now known as 979FM) Where he presented a music program called "Something Wild" twice a week and wrote and produced promos behind the scenes.
He continued with this for three years until illness overtook him and he had to quit in 1989.
He had attempted DJing online for people on Secondlife.
[edit] Logo and Character
The logo or avatar Wolfie uses was originally sketched (badly) as a doodle in 1989 by Wolfie himself... and the original sketch still exists to this day.
The sketch was somewhat like the current avatar, a wolf in a circle, but included the words "Radio Wolf" to reflect Wolfies love of radio.
The sketch was scanned and shown to Mexican artist Lyceus, sometimes known as Lobocursor, who re-drew and coloured it in 1998, Wolfie was brown during this time.
It was then released to the public on the internet.
Furry artist Poop recreated the image as a sketch around 2003 and the image was cleaned up by Second Life artist Quadrapop Lane in 2007.
Although Wolfie says his inner wolf is brown, the logo shows a white wolf, This is because despite efforts to create a good looking brown wolf, none ever looked right on screen, so Wolfie remains white.
The white wolf reflects another one of Wolfies characters Storr who was briefly used in the online game Furry Muck.
Wolfie is a Werewolf who was born as he is, in much the same style as Teen Wolf. There is no "curse" involved. Wolfie is fully in charge of his appearance at any time and does not require moonlight in order to shape-change, which is only a story promoted by Hollywood anyway.
Real Werewolves, according to Wolfie, are not offended by Hollywoods distortion of the facts, and still enjoy a good Werewolf story, However the movies would all be filed under "Comedy".
Wolfie is not the least bit aggressive and often suggests that he's far too domestic to be bothered to go hunting, and frankly the idea disturbs him.
However he likes to put on an act by suggesting he "eats babies" and takes part in various revolting activities like rolling in dead things or licking up his own vomit, if only for shock value and a chuckle.
Wolfie's nature is gentle, fun loving and protective... and friends suggest he has a little coyote thrown in for good measure (The Prankster).
Wolfie thinks the wolf gene was from his Dads side, but nobody knows for sure.
[edit] Eats A Kid a Day
In the late 1990s, Wolfie owned a large Alaskan Malamute called Benny (Khizama Wotta Napitite) a real gentle giant. During a walk one afternoon, Wolfie and Benny were stopped by two small boys, aged around ten. One boy, with eyes as wide as saucers asked "Is that a GUARD DOG? Cause That Man over there said HE'S got a guard dog, and he eats a Kid a Day!" His less Naive friend said "Don't be stupid, that'd be murder".
That's where the "Eats a kid a day" tag comes from, which was sometimes seen in Wolfie's profiles on various websites etc.
Wolfie now uses "The Werewolf of Melbourne" as his description on all of his social media pages.
[edit] Secondlife
Although having been persuaded by others to use Second Life, Wolfie! was not interested until he saw an episode about the subject on the science/technology journal Beyond Tomorrow, screened on Australia's Channel Seven. The episode was interesting as it even showed furries in Secondlife having a passionate kiss in public.
It was almost impossible to join Second Life that night, as so many Australians were logging in for the very first time. Help Island was "popping out" about three avatars a second. Once Wolfie managed to enter Second Life, He found he could not get off Help Island as the second help island was full, and getting to the mainland was impossible unless someone in-world teleported him there. This eventually happened when Glenny (an American friend who Wolfie had met via a Harry Potter Yahoogroup a couple of years earlier) teleported him to an Elven area within SL, and Wolfie lived there for a week or so, sleeping in the bushes, as he had no land at the time.
Wolfie's first avatar was the basic human who wore tie-dyed pants and got no respect from anyone.
His first real avatar was a free white Secondlife wolf given to Wolfie by Patch Fuhr
Wolfie's usual Second Life avatar is usually a gold "Werehouse" wolf or a "Werehouse werewolf".
When Second life began to use sculpties and talking jaws, Wolfie upgraded to a "fox coloured" Instinct Wolf... although that didn't really last.
[edit] Eragon and Wolfie's pub
When Ryu joined Second Life, Ryu was so enthusiastic about it that he planned to buy an Island. Although Wolfie tried to disuade him, Ryu ultimately bought Eragon. (He named it after the books
After Eragon was created, Wolfie was invited to Share it with Ryu, The offer was extended to Kath McGill also.
After weeks of trying to decide what to do, Wolfie came up with the idea for the Kookaburra Pub. Which would sit "in the old gum tree". As in the song,
The original plan was to buy a pre-fabricated building from Caledon, but then Ryu decided to try his hand at building. After looking at some photos of Aussie pubs on Flickr, Ryu constructed the pub and the Bar. Wolfie did not consider himself a builder, and therefore didn't contribute much to the building.
Surprisingly, Ryu offered his hand to Kath, first in Second Life and then in Real Life, She accepted both times, and the two then went to Australia on their Honeymoon to stay with Wolfie!.
Wolfie has since left Eragon to it's two owners and now concentrates his efforts on ABC Island.
[edit] ABC Island
- Main article: ABC Island
One night, Jaggpro McCann visited Wolfie and asked if he would like to have him play at the Pub. Wolfie agreed to that and wanted to let others know this would be happening.
Lowell Cremone suggested that an advertisement be placed on his forum, Metaverse Journal, and it was here that Wolfie discovered that Abi Goldflake was trying to get ABC Island up and running in Second Life.
After getting ABC Island set up, Abi asked Franko, Lowell and Wolfie to join her on the new island. The Island was left open and Wolfie took some advantage of this, inviting friends over for a mock takeover while he wore a vest with the Union Jack emblazoned on it. He also took several risque photos of himself as Dr. Frankenfurter from The Rocky Horror Show.
Soon after, the Island was closed and built on by Gary Hazlitt, who had also built Big Pond for Telstra. On the opening day, there was a big party and during that week Abi chose her first ABC Friends Administrators. Wolfie Rankin was chosen, along with Diag Anzac, Lowell Cremone, Evangeline Wind, Esmeralda Vernon, Rails Bailey, and Skribe Forti.
ABC Island is notable in that although it is a "commercial sim", it is furry friendly, and quite a few of the ABC Friends Admin are furries themselves. This is hardly surprising since the ABC are highly supportive of cultural diversity.
[edit] Rockit
- Main article: Rockit
Wolfie saw potential in ABC Island having live programs just like they do on their TV and Radio networks.
However, Wolfie was against pre-programmed questions, feeling that if everything on Second Life was pre-programmed then you may as well simply just have a webpage, so Rockit was to be a live program, hosted weekly.
The show is run like several ABC gameshows, where people play for fun but don't win anything as they are extra-low-budget productions, and this also convinced Wolfie that such a show would work, providing it was entertaining enough.
Although Rockit was popular, it was difficult to produce, often taking days to write questions, now most people in Second Life don't watch television, wishing to remain in world and do whatever they do, Wolfie was no exception, but it was also difficult to draw players to the show, Rockit was wrapped up for good (partially due to an accident which damaged Wolfies hearing in 2009).
[edit] Leaving Second Life
Increasingly Wolfie was of the opinion that Second Life had nothing more to offer, He felt that although it had potential, convincing others was somewhat like banging one's head on a desk, added frustrations did nothing to convince Wolfie that Second Life was the promised land that he once thought it was, the selling off of Eragon, although expected, was the final nail in the coffin.
"I always felt more like a people person, a helper, and I was happy to do that, but there was always this load of technical stuff which needed doing, and I never saw myself as someone who was always tinkering with settings and worrying endlessly about prims, and people tended to use SL to hide, I was surprised when Twitter would just go right off the moment any news started happening somewhere, while people in SL could be quite oblivious to it for days or weeks. I was unhappy about how things were on ABC Island, I often felt like nobody cared much... and yet wouldn't allow us the control we needed to get things done... after a while I asked myself whats the point and up and left."
Skribe had introduced Wolfie to Twitter which appealed to Wolfie because Twitter was full of media people, and as Wolfie thought of himself as a member of the media too, he fitted in easily, Second Life fell by the wayside and Wolfie officially left it in January 2011, and has not returned. He was joined by one of his best friends daveinoz (a famous Australian law lecturer) in leaving Second Life. They maintain daily contact.
[edit] Documentary
Wolfie has been in a documentary about Second Life sub-cultures, called Alter Ego, which also features a musician Alfonzo and Marko the Rat, a long time friend and fursuiter.
The Documentary was made by December Films and went to air on SBS in 2009.
It's directed by Shelley Matulick who also created the short Our Brilliant Second Life which was seen on SBS in 2006.
The Documentary is available to buy directly from December Films.
As an additional furry connection, the company Shelley's sister works for created the Orangina commercial with the dancing furries which can be seen on YouTube.
[edit] Beautiful Kate
Wolfie is seen briefly in the new Rachel Ward movie "Beautiful Kate" Which premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in 2009. The movie stars Bryan Brown, Rachel Griffiths, Ben Mendelsohn, Maeve Dermody and Sophie Lowe. The film was released, to a wider audience, in Australia, in August 2009.
[edit] Cancer Survivor
In 2005, Wolfie found he had cancer. An operation removed the tumor and Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy followed. He's still doing really well in 2011.
[edit] Copyright
Wolfie!, Wolfie Rankin, The Wolfie Logo, Air Digital (Including "Thunderbolt" logo] are Copyright PWTS, 1986-2011, All rights reserved.
[edit] External links
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