Dogpatch Press has asked me to write an article about fursuits based on characters in books, either literary classics like Watership Down or the books by furry writers like the FWG members. But are there any? All the fursuits that I know about are of original characters. If you know of any fursuits of book characters, please let me know of them.
Alice in Wonderland White Rabbits are a staple in theatrical fursuits. Then there’s also all the Winnie the Pooh-related suits, and the stuff on display every day at Disney. But then, by definition I suppose all theatrical fursuits are of literary/theatrical characters…
I do know that there is/was a fursuiter of Amon from Rukis’ Red Lantern series.
That’s the only one that immediately springs to my mind.
Everything I’ve ever seen has been either an original fursona or a visual-media-based character.
On the other hand, it’s possible that I’ve seen some modeled on book characters and I just didn’t recognize them. I remember seeing someone in a fursuit parade once that was in a monk’s habit (don’t remember their species now) and wondering offhand if it was related to Redwall – but in thinking about it, unless they were carrying the book in question or had the character’s name as their badge, it might be hard to tell the difference between, say, a fursuit that was a dedicated Redwall character versus just being a mouse/hare/squirrel/etc in medieval garb carrying a sword. With characters from visual media, you have instant recognition of their particular outfit or markings or whatever, whereas the exact physical attributes of literary characters can be left more to interpretation. In most cases, you’d have basically a piece of cover art to go on, and that’d be about it.
Please tell me that somewhere there is a Don Coyote suit.
Tilt Longtail has his version of the Brer Fox character. I don’t know if he is modeled after the Brer Fox of the Disney film “Song of the South” or the original Joel Chandler Harris “Tales of Uncle Remus” version of Brer Fox. I suspect the former is more likely. He has some good pics on his FA page.
Some one could become wealthy developing furry suits for Walt Kelly’s characters . . . a cigar-chomping alligator fer 'xample.