Merry Christmas, everybody!

Earlier this month, I uploaded a version of the above drawing without characters and asked whether you would be interested in adding your fursonas to create a furry Christmas card. Thank you to everybody who participated – Cally, Foxfire, and Stealthy. Special thanks to green_copper for providing their private collaboration tool for this project and to Foxfire for giving it a boost on the Mastodon side of the Fediverse. It brought me so much joy to see people add their sonas, and I hope the result will bring you just as much joy!

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope you have a wonderful holiday time, or just a wonderful time in general, and get to spend time with those you care about, whoever they may be.

On a private note

Joining the furry fandom is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I found a community of encouraging, kind, and funny people animals who make me smile every single day. Similarly, I’m actually happy that “the other website” had its little API disaster because otherwise, I wouldn’t have found the Fediverse and this lovely, furry place within it. I probably spend too much time here, but that’s okay because I enjoy spending my time here, in this small corner of the internet that’s full of awesome people. Thank you for making this place so special; thank you for being you.

“Oh heck, I completely forgot about this and still want to add my fursona!”
You can! Sure, the intention was to have the final card by the 25th, but if you’re a day or two late, who cares? You can still add your sona the same way as before.

“What about licencing?”
This image is released under a CC-BY licence, which means that you can practically do whatever you want with it as long as you credit the artists (see below).

“What did you say about a collab tool?”
@[email protected] made a really cool tool to collaborate with other people on the internet. It’s even open source!

Artist Credit (left to right)

Cally (@[email protected])
Stealthy (@[email protected])
Amp (@[email protected])
Foxfire (@[email protected]) [+ the snowfur outside the window]

Thank you again, everybody. I hope you have a great rest of 2025. I love you all <3

We’re halfway to Christmas and I figured I’d post a reminder because this is a time-sensitive project. The original post is still on page 1 of c/furry, but Local and Subscribed feeds move way faster, and the image has changed a good bit in the past 10 days, so it’s worth it, I think.

I had this fun idea that we (the “furry side” of Lemmy / the Fediverse) could create a Christmas card together. I drew the background and already added my fursona, and now I’d like to ask you to add your own fursona. If you want to add something to the background, you’re welcome to do so, too! The goal is to have a furry Christmas card by the 25th of December.

How to add your fursona to the drawing:

1. First, you download the “base” drawing from here (hosted on pawb), open it in the image editor of your choice, and add your fursona on a separate layer; make sure the layer with your sona is the same size as the base, 4000x2000 pixels.

2. Then, you remove the base and export only the layer with your sona on a transparent background as a PNG. There’ll be lots of empty space because of the layer size, but that’s intentional!

3. You can either insert the PNG yourself (see below), or reply to this post with your image in the comment and I’ll add it to the drawing.

• How to insert it yourself: Go to this website. In the top right corner, there’s a little cog. Click on that and then on “Create Team”. A team is basically your user account. Copy the login details the website gives you in case you need to change your image later. Once you’ve done that, click on the little picture frame in the top left corner and then on “Add Image”. Add a description (e.g. your username for image credit) and upload your image file. Because the layer with your sona is the same size as the base, it’ll be exactly where you drew it on your device.

• If you don’t want to / can’t draw your fursona, you can copy-paste an existing drawing of your sona, too. If you have absolutely no idea how to do that, I can help you! Everybody is encouraged to participate regardless of art skills.

Additional info for nerds

The advantage of inserting your drawing yourself is that you’re in full control and can replace or remove it without waiting for me to do it for you. If you don’t want to do it yourself or have tech trouble, I can help you or just insert it for you. The website is a tool built by @[email protected], who says that the website doesn’t save anything beyond what you upload and non-identifying debug logs on errors. The source code can be found here.

If you want to move your image around a bit or use a smaller-sized image, you’ll need to change the x/y values of your layer on the website; there is no drag-and-drop. The website may also be a bit buggy, but a reload usually helps. You most likely won’t need to change the z-value, unless your character is behind something they shouldn’t be behind.

Base file with layers (if you want to work with layers; Dropbox links): .xcf (GIMP) file and .psd (Photoshop) file. The PS file looks like it works in Krita. I don’t have PS, but it should work with that, too.

Regarding licencing, unless further discussion leads to something else, CC-BY will be used. This means that you can do whatever you want with the image as long as you credit the artists.

Artist credit (left to right)

Cally (@[email protected])
Amp (@[email protected])
Foxfire (@[email protected]) [they also made the snowman cat outside the window]

More names that aren’t on the uploaded image yet because I’ll do that later but don’t want to forget anybody:
TCStealthy (@[email protected])

If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. I just hope this doesn’t flop tbh :3c