Alector Fencer

Alector Fencer is a professional artist and full time graphic novel artist living in Berlin, Germany.

Alector's passion for art began at a young age with various colours, patterns and depictions of her environment. As her work progressed, she gained a reputation for her distinctive fantasy style on FurAffinity and other internet art sites. It wasn't for long before she was approached by companies and publishers asking for paintings and graphics. She has been working as a successful freelance artist, depicting the visions of her commissioners in a very distinctive manner, where emotions and environments were always the most important aspect of all.

Ever since she was able to bring her imagination onto a canvas, Alector felt more drawn to depicting animals instead of humans. „It just always felt right to me.“ Finding the furry community therefore was, and still is, the best experience for her art and herself as a person. For a long time, Alector travelled around the world to collect new ideas and inspiration for her artwork. Photographs and the impressions of her surroundings gave her the impulse to enter worldbuilding, as she has always put value into wrapping characters into backgrounds instead of making them the high focus of her art. But Alector's biggest inspirations still are movies and music. It wasn't for long before the idea of her debut graphic novel, „Myre“ came to her mind in form of a dream. It was from that day on, a hot summer day in 2009, that Alector began to settle down slowly and let her mind roam the world instead.

To this day, Alector has completed two large graphic novels. One of which came out just recently in July, and marks only the beginning of her worldbuilding explorations. In spite of her absence from the internet for extended periods of time, when she is working on graphic novels, it's the community which she always puts in front of everything else. It is from there that the stories, tales and images of Myre pour. She is the lead (and only) artist, director and head writer of the series. Her graphic novels appear like animated movies in book format. The idea to depict panels like animated sequences is due to the biggest dream she has, which is being able to go into the animation business one day. For the past four years, Alector Fencer has focused solely on the paintings and completion of the first volume of Myre as well as Haunter of Dreams. In spite of the tremendous amount of work and logistics that such a large project entails, she hasn't lost her joy and inspiration for the continuation of the series Chronicles of Yria.

Ever since Myre got published in Germany by Splitter, she has had the chance to step into the world of comic artists and got in touch with many seasoned artists and comedians who were drawn into the world of Yria. In 2018, Alector's work got nominated for two awards, and won her the award of „Bets Artist in Germany“. She is now presented in various culture and art magazines with interviews such as COMIXENE, Tagesspiegel, podcasts by RBB Kulturradio, Carpe Artes and more. Alector has so far been invited twice to a talkshow called „Der ComicTalk“ where she got to know Hella von Sinnen. The great level of exposure drew a lot of attention to the Furry Fandom, where Alector was able to create more connections between the Comic Fandom and the furry community.

„I remember a presentation that I once had in class. I presented a painting of a human and one of an anthro in front of them and claimed that one of my bigger dreams is to have more communities such as these come together and understand each other’s inspirations. They all laughed at me. It never deterred me.“

Since the beginning of last year, German publishers have begun to roam furry conventions in order to scout out great artists for comic work and it's thanks to Alector that many questions or preconceptions about the furry community have been cleared. The way how Alector describes the furry community to „laymen“ is in a very delicate manner such as to making them more curious. „It's a vast community of like-minded, creative and friendly people who appreciate the art and fascination for anthropomorphic animals. It's a community of people the world has never seen before. Art has a deeper meaning, touching profound levels of peoples' lives, connecting people from all corners of the world. As soon as you step your foot into it, you feel home.“

Connecting the furry community with other art communities through comics is one way for Alector to express her love and loyalty to the fandom. „It doesn't matter where my stories will take me one day. Home is where my heart is, and that is definitely this fandom. You helped me made all of this possible. And while this is just the beginning of my journey, I would never want to go on these paths all by myself.“