Thumper




 * Thumper is also a rabbit character in Bambi.

Thumper lives in Vancouver, Washington, U.S.A.. He is a fursuiter who has attended many conventions, a musician (percussionist), and a DJ (EarVelvet). Thumper is a volunteer for a not-for-profit character performance association and works as a network engineer in Portland, Oregon.

Characters
Thumper owns 4 character fursuits: "Thumper" the white rabbit, "Bumper" the bear, "Geronimo" the gecko and "Hilyte" the sabertooth tiger.

"Thumper" has been through 4 different revisions. Thumper v1.0 first appeared at CF9 in 1998. Thumper v2 has gone through 3 different versions of the head (made by Kodi Pup, Whitefox and Thumper himself) and a few feet replacements, but the body and details have remained unchanged.

"Bumper" was made by Kodi Pup.

"Geronimo" was the first mascot/cartoon style character made entirely by Thumper himself and appeared for the first time at FC2006. He returned for FC2007 in a Tuxedo masquerading as "Gex" (the Eidos Interactive game character) in keeping with the Convention's "007" theme.

"Hilyte" was built as a collaboration by RubyDragon and Dream Machine Costumes. His first appearance was 2015.

Conventions
Thumper was Guest of Honor at the inagural VancouFur convention in March 2012.

Thumper has attended:
 * Anthrocon: Albany Anthrocon 1998, Anthrocon 2000
 * Anthro Northwest (2017, 2018, 2019)
 * BLFC: Biggest Little Fur Con 2014, Biggest Little Fur Con 2015, Biggest Little Fur Con 2016, Biggest Little Fur Con 2017, Biggest Little Fur Con 2018, Biggest Little Fur Con 2019
 * Confurence: ConFurence 9 (1998), ConFurence 10 (1999)
 * Conifur NW: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
 * Furry Fiesta: 2015
 * Further Confusion: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
 * Furry Connection North 2013
 * FWA: Furry Weekend Atlanta 2017, Furry Weekend Atlanta 2018
 * Howl-o-ween: Howloween 2002, Howloween 2003, Howloween 2004, Howloween 2005, Howloween 2006
 * Megaplex: Furry Spring Break (2001), Pawpet Megaplex 1 (2002)
 * Mephit FurMeet: Mephit Furmeet 2 (1998), Mephit Furmeet 3 (1999), Mephit Furmeet 4 (2000), Mephit Furmeet 5 (2001)
 * Midwest FurFest: 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
 * Motor City Furcon: 2015
 * RainFurrest: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
 * VancouFur: VancouFur 2012, VancouFur 2013, VancouFur 2016, VancouFur 2018, VancouFur 2019

Music
Thumper is a percussionist with several years experience in high-school and middle school jazz bands and today enjoys occasionally getting together to play with his 'genre-less' garage band "Rusty Pipe".

Thumper was the center snare and a music writer for the Willamette High school Wolverines drum line for 4 years.

As a DJ, Thumper used his connections at a light and sound company to put on large stage shows; his first public show in 1992. He played mostly Pop and Top 40 for high schools and middle schools in the Eugene area (while a high-school student himself). He later specialized in house parties for fraternities and sororities around the University of Oregon. He 'retired' from doing public shows after moving to the Portland area for College in 1995. He came back in 2002 for Howl-o-ween and continues to play multiple live shows each year, many at furry events and conventions.

During high school he used an analog multi-track editing studio at his school to compose original songs and create many remixes of tunes, however all this material is thought to have been lost during his move in 1995 or is still on a shelf in the studio back in Eugene.

Today Thumper enjoys playing mixed shows of Top 40 Dance remixes, House and Retro for his public shows. He has done a few private Internet Techno/Trance/Dance shows but hasn't had an audience to play such a set live recently. He used primarily CD's but also .wavs from computer during the 90's but has switched to all digital since 2002 and presently uses Traktor Studio for live events.

Thumper's live performances are done under the name EarVelvet and can be found at http://www.earvelvet.com/

On-line characters
Thumper found furry back in 1996 while playing a number of characters on TLK MUCK. He later was very active with a character called Thumpy on FurryMUCK. He presently has a character on Second Life called "Thumper Bunnyhug".

TLK Mag
Thumper was the editor and web host for an online TLK Fan Webzine called The Pride Lands Online.

FurDir
Thumper was the creator and programmer of the FurDir. The FurDir was created in 1996 and released online in 1997 as the first searchable Furry Web Directory that was built with dynamic web code and all input and content controlled automatically by the users/members. Thumper was prompted to create the FurDir after failing for months to get listed on any of the other Furry Web Directories at the time which were all manually created and updated and frequently has long delays between updates or getting responses from the owners to get added or information changed.