Wolfie Rankin
From WikiFur, the furry encyclopedia.
Wolfie Rankin (born 1965) is a werewolf (therianthrope) from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He is usually called Wolfie!, having used that name as early as 1986, and is mostly known for his activities on the Second Life simulation.
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[edit] The Radio Wolf
After leaving High School in 1985, Wolfie briefly studied at The School of Audio Engineering in St. Kilda, Victoria.
But soon joined "The Radio Works", A School for Radio Announcers, in South Melbourne, Where he studied the basics of working as a DJ.
Upon leaving, He joined a public radio station in Melton, Victoria called 3 RIM-FM (Now known as 979FM) Where he presented a music program called "Something Wild" twice a week and wrote and produced promos behind the scenes.
He continued with this for three years until illness overtook him and he had to quit in 1989.
He still DJs at times for people on Secondlife.
[edit] Logo
Wolfie uses a logo as an avatar on various forums. Its original form, sketched by Wolfie in 1989, was a wolf in a circle with the words "Radio Wolf", as Wolfie was a radio announcer. It was then shown to Mexican artist "Lyceus" (aka "Lobocursor") who re-drew it in colour in 1998. It was then released to the public on the internet.
"Poop" recreated the image as a sketch around 2003 and the image was cleaned up by Second Life artist Quadrapop Lane in 2007.
Although Wolfie says his inner wolf is brown, the logo shows a white wolf. Wolfie believes the logo looks better as it is, and that it reflects another fursona of his, named Storr.
[edit] Secondlife
Although having been persuaded by others to use Secondlife, Wolfie! was not interested until he saw an episode about the subject on the science/technology journal Beyond Tomorrow, screened on Australia's Channel Seven. The episode was interesting as it even showed furries in Secondlife having a passionate kiss in public.
It was almost impossible to join Secondlife that night, as so many Australians were logging in for the very first time. Help Island was "popping out" about three avatars a second. Once Wolfie managed to enter Secondlife, Wolfie found he could not get off Help Island as the second help island was full, and getting to the mainland was impossible unless someone in-world teleported him there. This eventually happened when Glenny (an American friend who Wolfie had met via a Harry Potter Yahoogroup a couple of years earlier) teleported him to an Elven area within SL, and Wolfie lived there for a week or so, sleeping in the bushes, as he had no land at the time.
Wolfie's first avatar was the basic human who wore tie-dyed pants and got no respect from anyone.
His first real avatar was a free white Secondlife wolf given to Wolfie by Patch Fuhr
Wolfie's usual Second Life avatar is usually a gold "Werehouse" wolf or a "Werehouse werewolf".
Because Secondlife uses sculpties and talking jaws now, Wolfie has upgraded to a "fox coloured" Instinct Wolf.
[edit] Eragon and Wolfie's pub
When Ryu joined Secondlife, Ryu was so enthusiastic about it that he planned to buy an Island. Although Wolfie tried to disuade him, Ryu ultimately bought Eragon. (He named it after the books, but it is not an RPG Sim).
After Eragon was created, Wolfie was invited to Share it with Ryu, The offer was extended to Kath McGill also.
After weeks of trying to decide what to do, Wolfie came up with the idea for the Kookaburra Pub. Which would sit "in the old gum tree". As in the song,
The original plan was to buy a pre-fabricated building from Caledon, but then Ryu decided to try his hand at building. After looking at some photos of Aussie pubs on Flickr, Ryu constructed the pub and the Bar. Wolfie did not consider himself a builder, and therefore didn't contribute much to the building.
Surprisingly, Ryu offered his hand to Kath, first in Secondlife and then in Real Life, She accepted both times, and the two then went to Australia on their Honeymoon to stay with Wolfie!.
Wolfie has since left Eragon to it's two owners and now concentrates his efforts on ABC Island.
[edit] ABC Island
- Main article: ABC Island
One night, Jaggpro McCann visited Wolfie and asked if he would like to have him play at the Pub. Wolfie agreed to that and wanted to let others know this would be happening.
Lowell Cremone suggested that an advertisement be placed on his forum, Metaverse Journal, and it was here that Wolfie discovered that Abi Goldflake was trying to get ABC Island up and running in Second Life.
After getting ABC Island set up, Abi asked Franko, Lowell and Wolfie to join her on the new island. The Island was left open and Wolfie took some advantage of this, inviting friends over for a mock takeover while he wore a vest with the Union Jack emblazoned on it. He also took several risque photos of himself as Dr. Frankenfurter from The Rocky Horror Show.
Soon after, the Island was closed and built on by Gary Hazlitt, who had also built Big Pond for Telstra. On the opening day, there was a big party and during that week Abi chose her first ABC Friends Administrators. Wolfie Rankin was chosen, along with Diag Anzac, Lowell Cremone, Evangeline Wind, Esmeralda Vernon, Rails Bailey, and Skribe Forti.
ABC Island is notable in that although it is a commercial sim, it is furry friendly, and quite a few of the ABC Friends Admin are furries themselves. This is hardly surprising since the ABC are highly supportive of cultural diversity.
[edit] Rockit
- Main article: Rockit
Wolfie saw potential in ABC Island having live programs just like they do on their TV and Radio networks.
However, Wolfie was against pre-programmed questions, feeling that if everything on Second Life was pre-programmed then you may as well simply just have a webpage, so Rockit was to be a live program, hosted weekly.
The show is run like several ABC gameshows, where people play for fun but don't win anything as they are extra-low-budget productions, and this also convinced Wolfie that such a show would work, providing it was entertaining enough.
[edit] Documentary
Wolfie has been in a documentary about Second Life sub-cultures, called Alter Ego, which also features a musician Alfonzo and Marko the Rat, a long time friend and fursuiter.
The Documentary was made by December Films to be aired soon on SBS.
It's directed by Shelley Matulick who also created the short Our Brilliant Second Life which was seen on SBS in 2006.
As an additional furry connection, the company Shelley's sister works for created the Orangina commercial with the dancing furries which can be seen on YouTube.
[edit] Beautiful Kate
Wolfie is seen briefly in the new Rachel Ward movie "Beautiful Kate" Which premiered at the recent Sydney Film Festival in Australia. The movie stars Bryan Brown, Rachel Griffiths, Ben Mendelsohn, Maeve Dermody and Sophie Lowe. The film will be released widely in August 2009.
[edit] External links
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