Taral Wayne

Taral Wayne
Real name	Wayne MacDonald
Born	October 12, 1951
Birth place	Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
Date of death	July 2024
Death place	Ontario, Canada
Spouse(s) or mate(s)	n/a
Profession or hobby	Artist, writer
Character species	Human
Convention GoH	ConFurence 3, Anticipation (2009 WorldCon)

Taral Wayne was an sci-fi and furry artist and writer, with a career extending as far back as the pre-furry APA, Vootie. He is considered one of the first furry artists of the furry fandom (also known as the First Fandom).

Biography

Max BlackRabbit and Taral at Taral's apartment in Toronto. Photo by artist Steve Martin

Née Wayne MacDonald in Toronto, Ontario, Taral Wayne was one of Canada's best known science fiction fan artist. His pen name (Taral) originated from a fictional synthetic language, Siroihin, that he described in one of his early science fiction fanzines.

Career

Taral began his involvement in the science fiction fandom in 1971 when he joined the Ontario Science Fiction Club (OSFiC). Over the years he contributed art and writing to a wide variety of amateur and semi-professional fanzines, as well as publishing his own (Red Shift, Delta Psi, Synapse, New Toy, among others). In the late 1980s he made the jump to professional illustration, by necessity working mainly outside the science fiction genre. A West Coast American magazine called Ruralite was his main client at that time.

During the 1990s, Taral focused more on comic book work. His major achievement was the furry comic title Tales of Beatrix Farmer (Beatrix) by Mu Press and Vision Comics. Created by fellow artist Steve Gallacci, the stories were a collaborative effort: drawn by Taral and co-written by Gallaci, they tell the story of Beatrix, an ordinary female rabbit who is wounded in a drive-by shooting. She is rescued by omnipotent alien beings (visible only to her), who ensure her future safety by wrapping her in a metallic suit that confers invulnerability. She soon discovers that it also renders her completely "safe" from bodily needs—food, drink, sleep, sex, touch, taste, or smell. Forced into the role of a superhero for hire, Beatrix yearns to be ordinary again or at least have the option of removing the suit when desired.

Due to generally poor sales in the entire comics industry at the time of the Marvel Comics bankruptcy, the series was dropped after only a few issues. After that, Taral contributed short pieces to other comics as time and inclination permitted, and created many back covers for Gremlin Trouble, a comic published by AB Pixilations

Other significant work he has done within the SF genre includes illustrating Rudy Rucker's novel Spaceland (Tor Books, 2002), restoration of American underground cartoonist Vaughn Bodé's art appearing in fanzines for Rare & Well Done Bode, research and illustration for John Robert Colombo's book Years of Light (Dundurn Press, 1982), while also contributing to The Fantasy Showcase Tarot Deck (Bruce Pelz, 1980), and writer Pauli Kidd's Tank Vixens card game (United Publications, 2004).

In addition to his art, Taral has sold a small number of articles and short stories, worked on TV and cartoon presentations, produced several CDs compilations of his art and fan writing, sold tee-shirts, and even designed a postal cancellation for the 1978 Worldcon. The bulk of Taral's career, though, has been creating art for private commissions, numbering more than 3,000 inked, colored, or penciled works to date.

Taral resided in the Parkdale district of Toronto. While still possessing close ties to science fiction fandom, he was rather an outsider in the comics community.

Awards

Taral was nominated for and won several awards, including:

• Hugo Award - Nominated for Best Fan Artist eleven times (1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 2000, 2001, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and most recently 2012). Never awarded.
• October 2008 - He won the Rotsler Award for his long-time artistic achievement in amateur publications of the science fiction]community by the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.
• 2009 - He was nominated and awarded Worldcon's (Anticipation) Fan Guest of Honour in recognition of his contributions to science fiction fandom, particularly Canadian fandom.
• 2011 - Taral became the first recipient of the Best Canadian Fan Artist award bestowed by the Canadian Fanzine Fanac Award.

Fandom involvement

Saara Mar

Left to right: Max Blackrabbit, Taral wayne, (unknown), Mitch Beiro, Marc Schirmeister, Dave Fageol.

Taral has been considered for many years as one of the handful of initial furry artists in the fur fandom (including other notable ones such as Steve Gallacci [Albedo], Ken Sample, Steve Martin, Bob Hill, etc...), if not the very first recognized one.

He was a guest of honor at ConFurence 3 (1992), and his furry art has been featured in several furry comics, fanzines, and magazines (i.e. Gallery et al).

Characters

Taral's characters and the associated art is set in or around a fictional small town called Willow Run. His signature characters are a blue and white-furred, silver-eyed alien girl named Saara Mar, and another extraterrestrial girl named Tangel (short for Tangelwedsibel), a Teh Langgi girl featuring in a large number of Taral's drawings. She somewhat resembles a black and white furry dinosaur and hates being called a skunk.

Saara Mar

This character dates back to Taral's earliest work in the 1970s.

Saara is a Kjola, an extraterrestrial, representing a species so fantastically advanced in science that her powers seem less like magic (as per Arthur C. Clarke's observation), they seem more like cartoons (as per Taral). She isn't a 100% natural species per se, but a quantum-powered, synthetic, solid-state being animated by force fields, yet nevertheless a very sympathetic human personality for all that. She "discovered" the Earth in April 1970, her first contact by some strange coincidence with the artist Taral Wayne himself

Saara's appearance is that of a slim young woman who is a little over six feet (1.82 meters) tall, covered mainly in white fur but with peacock blue extremities and blue hair. The few places where it shows, her "skin" is chrome silver, as are the pupils of her eyes.

Saara's hair is worn in a pageboy cut and she is almost always barefoot. Nearly invulnerable and about 50 times stronger than a human being, her clothes are adornment rather than protection. Her usual costume is a variation of a chrome silver garment that is a "tool", i.e. it consists of a sort of force field and is continuous (through sub-space or a higher dimension) with the hull of her starship.

Among her non-human friends is Tangelwedsibel. The Langgi is only one of several species belonging to the interstellar community known as Dalmirin. The Illuriamimsi and Dnebrala are two other species that sometimes visit Earth following its "discovery."

Convention attendance

• Confurence - ?, 1992,* ?
• Worldcon - ?,** 2009, ?

(*) - Guest of Honor (**) - Fan Guest of Honour

Art

Taral produced consistent and refined line art, depicting figures in a stylized and rounded Franco-Belgian "ligne claire" (clear line) style. He also had a modest career illustrating books, magazines, and any other sort of kipple that makes him a buck. Extensive selections of his art and writing can be found on Fur Affinity and DeviantArt.

Health and death

In early 2017, Taral suffered a stroke, from which he began a slow recovery, and he continued to write and draw until his passing in July 2024 due to health issues.

See also

• Taral Wayne on Wikipedia

External links

This person is a WikiFur user: Taral Wayne's user page Taral Wayne's talk page

• Taral Wayne on DeviantArt
• Taral Wayne on Fur Affinity
• Taral Wayne on Facebook
• Taral Wayne on the ISFDB
• Taral Wayne on The Annex
• Taral Wayne on eFanzines.com
• Taral Wayne on Fancyclopedia
• Taral Wayne on ComicBookDB.com
• Taral Wayne on Pygmalion Syndrome (Statuephiles site)

Media

• Taral Wayne's GoH page on the Anticipation website (retrieved via the Internet Wayback Machine)

This stub about a person could be expanded.