Steve Carter

Steve Carter is an artist, writer, musician and photographer who lives in Texas, USA, who began sharing his work in the Elfquest fandom in the late eighties, emigrating to the furry fandom in the 1990s. He is a Milfur who served twenty years in the U.S. Air Force.

Fandom involvement
Steve joined the furry world in 1990 as a charter member of the APAzine Tai-Pan with friend and collaborator Mark Barnard. He departed that publication when it began to have, in his words, "too much emphasis on social liberalism and not enough on storytelling" and has been featured as a pin-up artist in various publications here and there. His work was featured in the APAzine Gallery from 2002 through 2004.

His first furry webpage was the directory Brigade on FurNation. However, after too many people called him by the name Brigade (it was the website's name) at Anthrocon 1999 over the July 4th weekend, he decided to change the title. In September of that year, he opened 'MouseHouse' on FurNation, where he kept his furry work until early 2001 when a friend offered him personal space while FurNation was having difficulty staying online. The re-title didn't really get his point across and he was still referred to as "Mousehouse" by people who don't know it was the name of the site, not the artist.

He co-authored the Blue Horizon and Dragon, Wolf & Tiger stories and has produced numerous pieces of artwork and music based on the series. He departed the project in late 2000 when Ted Blasingame's wife demanded veto power over all their work as well as credit for work she hadn't done, and Ted caved. A later attempt to re-involve himself in Blue Horizon was not fruitful, as the project had grown so cumbersome in his absence that he deemed it unmanageable.

In June 2010, Steve worked with Richard Thatcher on the next installments of Tales of the Morphing Period, which have appeared on his and Thatcher's Fur Affinity pages, respectively.

Art
Steve cites Frank Frazetta, Wendy Pini, Jon Bogdanove, Chuck Jones, Michael Ploog, H.R. Giger, Roger Dean, Terrie Smith and Warner Brothers cartoons as his main inspirations as a furry artist. His subject matter tends toward the positive, with warmth and affection of intact families as the most common recurring theme. He has a tendency to tell sad stories with happy endings in only a few panels.

In 2016, he converted to digital artwork and only rarely does traditional anymore.

Published works
So far, Steve has not put much effort into publications, as he has been fully employed. Steve designed the unit emblem for the 34th Combat Communications Squadron in 1995.

Three of his illustrations were selected for volume 4 of the 2003 UK edition of the Dungeons and Dragons Saturday morning cartoon DVD compendium.

In early 2013, Steve began taking formal art instruction at the local liberal art college in an effort to improve his artistic vocabulary. He has since branched out beyond ink and markers into larger-size works incorporating acrylic, pastels and other media, and graduated in late 2014 with a fourth degree.

Charity work
Steve dropped out of the furry fandom for a couple of years in the 1990s, but returned in 1997 solely as a means of paying off bills. After accomplishing this goal, he turned to more serious work supporting various charities, which he has been doing since his late teens. These include:


 * The USO.
 * The National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse.
 * The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
 * The National Association for Children of Alcoholics.
 * The Make-A-Wish Foundation.
 * TheTwin Towers Orphans Fund.
 * The Shriner's Hospital for Crippled Children.
 * The United Way.

In 2000, Steve received the Art Director's Choice award at Anthrocon 2000 for his illustration, Missing and its companion, Recovered, sold for $500. He donated the proceeds from these two pieces and all their print sales to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

In 2004, Steve was awarded Chairman's Choice at Anthrocon 2004 for his illustration, A Time For Letting Go, a poignant image done in remembrance of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. The theme of the piece was the need to progress in life despite its tragedies.

Child abuse prevention
Steve has been involved in the fight against child abuse, exploitation, and neglect since the late eighties. He has also been involved in youth mentoring since 1989, having been an assistant teacher, cub scout leader, and "big brother" to dozens of kids.

In March of 2014, Steve retired from youth mentoring after 25 years and counts the collective experience as the greatest of his life, stating in a Facebook post on April 13, 2017:

Trivia
A self-described movie geek, Steve wrote a movie review column for the Carolina Flyer in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the late 90s and has a large collection of avant-garde, artistic and foreign films.

As a musician, he plays drums, guitar, keyboards, and bass (his preferred instrument) and has created dozens of songs, only some of which have been made available and only on rare occasions. As a bassist, he is a collector of odd instruments, including the Rickenbacker 4003, Chapman Stick and "Funk Fingers," pioneered by bassist Tony Levin.

On women:

Steve is openly a tickling enthusiast, and refers to tickling as "the world's greatest topic." He has done considerable artwork on this theme over the years, ranging from G-rated parent/child interactions to more adult material.

He is a self-described "political atheist" and lives by the motto, "If I'm upsetting the nutjobs on both sides, I must be doing something right."

Steve has lived in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and various places around the United States. He currently resides in Texas where he is a freelance artist, expanding his artistic vocabulary. He holds degrees in Psychology, Computer Technology and Military History and is an ABA-qualified paralegal.

Websites
His current (inactive until he learns new coding skills) website is Back to Avalon, a reference to both Arthurian legend and the street in Northeast Texas where he first started drawing as a child.

MouseHouse was an online art archive created by Steve containing furry art ranging from G- to X-rated, formerly known as Brigade. The changeover came on September 24th, 1999 and was the result of various attendees of Anthrocon 1999 calling Steve "Brigade," despite his corrections that it was the name of the website, not the artist. The changeover to MouseHouse had approximately the same effect, so Steve reconstructed a new site incorporating his name, Steve Carter Fantasy Art since taken down at his request.

MouseHouse was at http://www.furnation.com/mousehouse/ from September 1999 - 2001, then at http://www.furstreet.com/mouse/ from 2001 - 2002.

The adult material disappeared from the site when Steve decided that a casual viewer should not be able to find both family-friendly artwork and adult material in the same place.