Halfshell Hero

Halfshell (born September 6, 1981), also known as Halfshell Hero, Sabaka, Sabaka'Zlo, Halfshell Boa, and Sabaka Mahusky, is a furry artist from Kansas City, Kansas, USA. Halfshell is blood related to country legend Merle Haggard and rock legend Melissa Etheridge. Halfshell is also friends with Jeff Goode (creater of Disney's American Dragon: Jake Long), Dante Basco (voice of Jake Long and played Rufio in Hook), Robbie Rist (voice of Whiz in Kidd Video, Michaelangelo in the original TMNT movie franchaise), and the late Stefán Karl Stefánsson (played Robbie Rottin on Lazy Town).

Fandom involvement
Halfshell Hero joined the fandom in late 2004 after leaving the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom. While surfing on various websites, he found anthropomorphic art, and was interested in the furry culture. After submitting his own art to the InflatioNation, and was welcomed into the community, chatting with other furries online and getting to meet fellow furry, Sir Kain before AnthroCon in 2005. Halfshell was also one of the six original FurAffinity admins (2005) after its Beta launch in 2005 when it was under ownership of Alkora, who was known as Byakko Wolf or Jheryn Lightfoot then.

Halfshell
Halfshell's main is a turtle fursona. It depicts from his transittion from his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles community to the furry community in 2004. The turtle character has gone through a few changes, the ninja attire and black headband was removed in 2005 and left remained a normal turtle for a few years after. When some the TMNT community joined the furries, red hair and then blue cap then was added in 2008.

Sabaka
Sabaka or Sabaka (Zlo) Mahusky [pronunciation: Saa'baka-shlo] is Halfshell's first original furry character. The character is a black and white husky-wolf mix (breed called wusky), with a scar down the left eye to his cheek. Sabaka Mahusky mostly donning a blue Hawaiian shirt with light blue palm leave design over it. Sabaka's alter-ego, Sabaka'Zlo is wearing his trademarked armor suit. Sabaka, the Russian meaning for dog or wolf; Zllo, the Russian meaning "demon", "evil", "devil". The idea for the character was spawned when Halfshell and a local kid were creating ideas for comic book characters. Sabaka is currently being used for Ironclaw role-playing game, and is Halfshell's retired fursuit since 2009.

Second life
Halfshell will often hang around Second Life under the name Halfshell Boa, and has created logos for various clubs and groups such as the Gay Furry Club (GFC), Cold Flame, and others.

Attendence

 * AnthroCon 2005, 2009
 * Mephit Fur Meet 2006
 * Midwest Furfest 2006, 2007
 * Rocket City Fur Meet 2007
 * Morphicon 2009

Staff

 * Midwest FurFest 2007; Performer, gopher, security
 * Morphicon 2009; Gopher Wrangler, Outreach

Art
Halfshell is also an artist working on traditional medium, mainly hand drawn using color pencils on paper. His artwork can be found on various platforms like deviantArt and Fur Affinity and on the discontinued SheezyArt and InflationNation. In 2005, Halfshell drew Disney's American Dragon: Jake Long inflated, which is now posted and published on Jeff Goode's official and personal site.

Music
In late 2004, Halfshell was a member of InflationNation site where he and Jaimetud Otter recorded “Blue’s Christmas” a parody of Elvis Presley's "Blue Christmas", recorded for a friend, Blue. Later in 2005, Halfshell recorded "Leavin' the Con", as an effect of his Post Con Depression of AnthroCon 2005. Halfshell wanted to try parodies after the influence of SonicBlu, trying parody music, or also known as Furry Filk, covering various styles of Elvis Presley, Tom Petty, and Duran Duran.

Halfshell's music used to be heard on furry stations such as Planetfurry Radio (KWAT) and OtterTunes (ROVR) from 2005 to roughly around 2017, and since 2014 on MadMusic Archive. Over the years, Halfshell has wrote a few songs such as, Caught In A Map (2005) (co-written by Viktoria Foxfang), If Everyday Was a Fur Con (2005), Leavin' the Con (2004), I Won't Chow Down (2003), and Give All It's Pumping (to Inflate Oz Kangaroo) (2007). Some songs has also appeared on the Dr. Demento Show playlist as anonymous in 2004 with "I Won't Chow Down" and on July 14 of 2012, has appeared under the name Halfshell Hero with the remake of Vikitoria Foxfang's "The Hungry Furries" (2012).

Videos

 * Caught In A Map, 2006 Feat. a cameo voiced by SonicBlu (Currently on YouTube)
 * In A Map, Feat. a cameo voiced by SonicBlu [Dir. Viktoria Foxfang]'' 2006 (Currently on YouTube; MFF "Weirdest Stuff Found On The Net")
 * Leavin' The Con, 2006 (Currently on YouTube)
 * Won't Chow Down, 2006 (Currently on YouTube)
 * Blue's Christmas, 2006 Feat. a cameo voiced by Viktoria Foxfang (Currently on YouTube)
 * Welcome to McDonald's'' (directed), 2008 SonicBlu's music video, (Currently on YouTube)