Octransfur
An alternative to Inktober first put together from community suggestions in 2020 for those of us who’d rather TF everyday, Octransfur is a little daily challenge meant to be a way for artists to practice their drawing skills, improvise on the daily, and have fun!
If you’ve never heard of the concept of a daily drawing challenge before, the idea is to do a drawing (TF-related, in this case) each day based on the prompt. It’s as simple as that! Sharing your drawing around is highly encouraged too– half the fun is seeing how everyone else interpreted the prompts, after all!
Digital or traditional, sketched or fully rendered, every day or just a few– no need to stress about doing things exactly right, just get out there and have fun!
Expect prompt submissions to start on a Tuesday in August. The final prompt list for each year will be released on the first (TF) Tuesday of September, to encourage a spirit of improvisation (and also in the spirit of procrastination).
Other forms of art (like writing and more) are also welcome, so long as you make it yourself and make an honest effort! Important note: GenAI trash is not welcome. If you ask a computer to do it for you, you’re not only disrespecting artists but cheating yourself out of the chance to think and reason for yourself. I didn’t think I’d have to point it out, but you’d be surprised at the gall of the clodpolls who commission computers for consumable crap. If you put text into a model and it returned an image, then you didn’t make art, you commissioned content from a computer.
This Year’s Prompts
The planned release date of Octransfur 2026’s prompt list is the 8th of September, 2026. Keep your eyes (or post-TF equivalents) open!
To those of with busy schedules and who might want to stack the deck in their favor a little bit ahead of time: If you choose to do some art in advance, then I won’t tattle on you~ Just try to save at least a tiny action for the day itself, like final details or a stylish signature.
My Own Plans
Naturally, I plan on doing a drawing every day– I couldn’t very well ask everyone else to do a challenge if I wasn’t willing to attempt it myself, after all!
Each year I take special Octransfur commissions in an auction format for each day– if you were around for what I did on prior years, it’s something similar to that. My own auction is run on FurAffinity. A FurAffinity account is required to comment and bid.
For this upcoming year, I might have some other stream-commission-type ideas in play, too.
As always, my General Commission Terms of Service apply to Octransfur commissions too.
Previous Years’ Prompts
2025 went pretty well, all things considered. I managed to finish it before the end of the year again, but not quite by the end of the month. There wasn’t really any big theme, more just focusing on getting stuff done.
As always, I’ve complied a YouTube playlist of all the timelapses for enjoyment and study. I’m particularly happy with the musical transitions I managed to find for them.
Anyhow, here’s Octransfur 2025 in numbers:
- Number of commissions: ~30 (spread over 19 days)
- Total stream time: ~121 hours (5 days)
- Total length of timelapses: ~51 minutes (link to playlist)
- Average time to complete a piece: ~4¼ hours
- 17 Plushies, 5 Pooltoys, & 25 other “object” forms
- Total number of Pokémon: ~70
- Frequent Flyers: Mew (7½), Pichu (6½), Eevee (4), Oreo (2½), Chien-Pao (2½)
- Days without a Pokémon: 7 (23%)
- Mid-TF pics: 7 (23%); Sequences: 3
- Pictures with clothing confetti: 11 (35%)
- Total time behind schedule: 27 days
2024 had a loose theme of looking back on past Octransfurs, which is why you might notice a few repeat days in there. How unfortunate that I had a repeat of last year as well, including getting sick and finishing late… ^^; But hey, we made it in the end!
Same as always, I’ve put the timelapses on YouTube in a playlist for your perusal.
Here are the statistics for my own 2024:
- Number of commissions: 23 or 25 (incl. trades)
- Total stream time: 132½ hours (5½ days)
- Total length of timelapses: ~45 minutes (link to playlist)
- Average time to complete a piece: ~4½ hours
- Total number of Pokémon: 41 or 43 (incl. illusions)
- Living Machines: 9, along with 6 other animate objects
- Frequent Flyers: Mew (8½), Planedragons (6), Pichu (4), Zangoose (3)
- Days without a Pokémon: 9 (29%)
- Number of mid-TF pics: 5 or 8 (16% – 25%)
- Animations: 1
- Total time behind schedule: 147 days
2023 could have gone better. I got sick partway through and then never really got back on track. I did finish it in the end though! …around the end of February. Lessons were learned, but we’ll see if I can restrain myself from taking six hours per piece next year.
As always, you can check out the timelapses in order on my YouTube channel in a convenient playlist~
And here are some statistics for my own 2023:
- Number of commissions: 26
- Total stream time: 162¾ hours (6¾ days)
- Total length of timelapses: 1 hour, 17 minutes (link to playlist)
- Average time to complete a piece: ~6 hours
- Total number of Pokémon: 44
- Frequent Flyers: Mew (7), Zorua (5), Pichu (4), Rotom Dex (3)
- Days without a Pokémon: 7 (22.5%)
- Number of mid-TF pics: about 10 (32%)
- Total time behind schedule: 116 days
In 2022, I kept on streaming my work, but also prepared a timelapse for every single Octransfur piece. You can see all of the timelapses in order at this playlist~
Here are some statistics for my own go at Octransfur 2022:
- Number of pieces completed: 31
- Number of commissions: 20
- Total stream time: 136⅔ hours
- Total length of timelapses: ~2 hours (link to playlist)
- Average time to complete a piece: ~4¼ hours
- Total number of Pokémon: 42
- Days without a Pokémon: 11 (35%)
- Number of mid-TF pics: 7 (22.5%)
- Number of “Drawn-into-Reality” pics: 10 (32%)
- Quickest Picture: Day 4 – Glitch (2½ hours)
- Longest Picture: Day 25 – Fortune (7 hours)
In 2021, I live-streamed my work for every single Octransfur piece.
For fun, here’s a few statistics about how Octransfur 2021 went on my end, based on this playlist of all my streams (except Day 27, due to technical difficulties):
- Number of pieces completed: 31
- Total stream time: ~115 hours
- Average time to complete a piece: Just under 4 hours
- Total number of Pokémon: 49
- Days without a Pokémon: 5 (Gem-2, Singular-9, Job-14, Instinct-18, Game-24)
- Number of “mid-TF” pics: 12
- Number of “post-TF” pics: 15
- Number of pics that could be called either post-TF or mid-TF: 4
2020 was the very first year of Octransfur– my first time putting a daily drawing challenge together, but not the first time I ever participated in a month-long drawing challenge. There are too many folks to credit with helping me put it together, but I am incredibly grateful for the support and the large response to it!
