ShinAkira

ShinAkira is a mixed-media artist who specializes in a mixture of manga and American art styles. He usually only uses traditional drawing methods rather than "new age" tools such as graphics tablets and Photoshop. His fursona is a king cheetah.

Shin enjoys role-playing with his friends online - usually as the character Eric Fox - by pouncing and otherwise fattening or inflating them.

Shin has many interests besides the furry fandom; he has a decent collection of animé from domestic to import as well as a collection of horror films like the Friday the 13th series, Scream, and Night of the Living Dead series.

Fursona
Shin, in addition to his primary fursona, has a character called Eric who changes species often and tends to take on the name of that species (for example, EricFox, EricCheetah, etc.)

Other characters include:
 * Taru Coyote: A slacker druggie coyote who's a ex-pro skater;
 * Shin FoxRoo: Shin's old "formal" fursona, he is a fox/kangaroo hybrid with various bionic limbs;
 * Akira Rat: A rat character;
 * Eric Fox: A unusual fox from a different dimension who can expand to infinite sizes;
 * Erik Kitsune: A 10 tailed overlord kitsune;
 * Erick Roo: A gluttonous semi-albino kangaroo with a black patch over his left eye;
 * TigerFox: A tiger/fox hybrid with super powers such as invulnerability and super strength.
 * Scooby Otter: A Otter who subosivly is a twin brother to Eric Fox

Eric Fox
Eric Fox Vulper is a male orange fox character belonging to ShinAkira and is by far the most popular of his characters. He was created around 1997 as Shin's fursona, but later became one of his characters.

Appearance
Eric is orange with purple on his fingers, toes and ears; he also has a tiger stripe on each of his cheeks. His eyes are gold coloured and slanted. He appears to be in his mid- to late-teens however is actually much older.

Character
Eric runs a book shop that sells not only books but anime and magical supplies too. Magic is a common problem for him, as it results in him constantly being transformed into a variety of different animals. He has a tendency to overeat or spontaneously gain weight due to an unexplained illness known as "bloatias", which can lead to him gaining over 20 tons in weight. In addition to this, certain foods cause Eric to inflate.

Wonka incident
At some point in the character history Eric was gorging on Halloween candy, during which he accidentally swallowed some Wonka brand chewing gum. He bloated up into a large round blueberry, was promptly juiced and left a solid purple colour from head to foot - including his eyes. During this time he was occasionally referred to as Eric PurpleFox.

The character was later returned to normal but still purple in the story Eric's Vigilant Bloat, written by RobCat. It wasn't until his fur fell out and he regrew his old orange fur, along with some pattern changes and new golden eyes that Eric was completely returned to normal.

Artwork
Shin's artwork consists mostly of fat and inflated furs; as well as transformation. However his colour-blindness prevents him from colouring his images.

Some people have criticized him for almost exclusively drawing male characters in his artwork. These criticisms have been ignored and, although acknowledging that his artwork is not the best around, Shin chooses to keep trying and improving.

His influences include cartoons from the 1960's to mid 90's and his friends, who help him with his artwork.

deviantART hacker incident
In December 2007, ShinAkira's deviantART account - along with many others - was hacked and vandalised, resulting in it being banned. Shin stated that this unaffected him, due to his planning to leave the site anyway due to changes to their Terms of Service.