Melvis Barksy

Melvis Barksy (real name Mark Moran), is a fursuiter who lives in Long Island, New York, USA.

Fandom involvement
Mark joined the furry fandom when he was fifteen years old in May 2016. His first attended convention was Anthrocon 2016. Upon attendance, he fell in love with the furry fandom and was eager to make new friends in it. Ever since then, Mark has been continuously attending Anthrocon, as well as other east-coast furry conventions. He also attends some furry meetups around Long Island, particularly the annual LIFurs OMGWTFBBQ in Sunken Meadow.

In addition to attending conventions, Mark occasionally makes his own artwork and Telegram stickers. While no professional, he enjoys expressing his creativity with his character, besides fursuiting.

Fursona
Mark's fursona, Melvis, is a young little red and black wolf. He is often cheeky, mischievous, and silly, but is generally warm-hearted and friendly to everyone, always doing his best to hold on to his smile and help others find theirs. He can sometimes tend to be a little shy and nervous, particularly when meeting new people. Being mostly red, Melvis often gets mistaken for a fox, much to his annoyance.

Fursuits
Mark's first fursuit, Melvis V1, is a full-body plantigrade suit constructed by Kodimade in November 2016. Its first convention debut was at Anthro New England 2017 and has appeared at several other eastern US furry conventions. A second plantigrade fursuit, Melvis V2, was made by That's Furred Up in June 2020. This version consists of an orange hair tuft, bigger eyes, bottom teeth, a longer tongue, soft claws, and more detailed fur. So far, it has appeared at several local and out of state furmeets. Mark plans for Melvis V2 to make its first convention debut at Furrydelphia 2021.

Since adding orange hair to his character, Mark intends to send the V1 fursuit head back and have an orange hair tuft attached to it to match the V2 head.

While wearing either fursuit, Mark speaks in a high and jolly voice which often tends to crack (either purposely or unintentionally). His performance is almost always hyper, silly, chipper, and a bit clumsy. He's also a major hugger and will give long hugs to as many people as he can.

Modifications
Mark made a couple of modifications to his V1 fursuit shortly after Anthro New England 2017 due to two discovered issues; the head's facial expression was too plain and under-expressive for his liking, and the bodysuit was too big and loose-fitting. To fix the former, he added small bottom eyelids made of red paper and cut out pieces of fleece shaped into eyebrows to give the face a more lively and energetic appearance. As for the latter, Mark's first solution was to wrap either foam or polyfill around his arms and legs to use as padding to make the bodysuit fit tighter. However, not only did this prove to be a slow and tedious process, but it would also restrict his body movement. In October 2018, the bodysuit was brought back to Kodimade to be downsized, eliminating the need for any padding.

For Furpocalypse 2019, Mark experimented with his character by removing the V1 fursuit head's happy eyebrows and replacing them with thicker, angry looking eyebrows. With this change of expression came a change in his performance as well. He portrayed Melvis as grumpy, angry, and "fierce", but still retained his usual silly and over-the-top behavior. The regular happy eyebrows went back on for all further conventions.

Convention attendance

 * Anthro New England - 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
 * Fur the More - 2020
 * Anthrocon - 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
 * Furrydelphia - 2017, 2019
 * Furpocalypse - 2016, 2017, 2019
 * Midwest Furfest - 2018, 2019