Monday, 7 July 2014

An introduction

I should like to introduce Furvus the Faun.

This is my name when I'm posting about costume design.

Furvus is a capripede, meaning that he has a pair of goat legs, and is very goat-like from the waist down. His fur and hair are black. Naturally, Furvus has a beard, and also a pair of short horns. His face, arms, and upper body are pretty much human, even if he does have sticky-out goat ears and is a bit on the hairy side.

In Latin, the adjective 'furvus' means dusky; swarthy; dark; black. So it's an alliterative name that fits not only with the character's colouring, but also with the Latin language. Fauns are, after all, creatures of Roman mythology.

In more modern times, the fauns have become conflated with the satyrs of ancient Greece, Satyrs could often be portrayed with horses' ears and tails, and might be otherwise humanoid. The whole capripede image was a particular variant that seems to have captured the public imagination. Satyrs are, at least in some eyes, a whole lot naughtier than fauns, particularly in the Department of Sexual Excess as opposed to Music, Dance and Wine. They often get portrayed as more beast-like, with ape-shaped faces.

In an extreme example of this, the recent Narnia films made a distinct difference between fauns and satyrs. The former were basically human, but with goat-like horns, ears and lower body, whereas the latter were essentially biped anthropomorphic goats.

I'm sticking to the less animal version.

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