Character Name: Zelaphas (zel-LAH-fuss)

Nickname: Zel

Species: Striped Hyena

Sex: Female (originally male, explanation below)

Creation Date: March 2008

Purpose: Zelaphas is my representation within the Anthro Fandom

Origin

Zelaphas was created shortly after the movie The Golden Compass was released in theaters. In The Golden Compass, an entirely alternate world is shown where the souls of humans exist outside of their bodies (as opposed to within, as they allegedly do in our world). These souls take the form of an animal, and the animal reflects the true personality of the owner. These soul-animals are called daemons.

I saw the movie in theaters and became absolutely enthralled with the concept of daemons and the world they existed in. I looked up as much online info as I could on the subject, and found a whole fandom of people equally engrossed in the world created by Phillup Pullman in his series His Dark Materials (of which The Golden Compass is the first book). I remember being up until 5 a.m. some nights during my senior year of college reading this series, regardless if I had a class or exam the next morning.

As I explained in a forum I briefly joined for fans of the series, I found a variety of fun quizes you could take to find your “true daemon,” and one of my results was a hyena. After a bit more research on the animal and its different sub-species, I decided the striped hyena fit me the best. At a glance, their appearance is ugly or off-putting, but in truth they are beautiful, unique creatures. They both hunt and scavenge, eat meat or vegetation, and are solitary creatures some times and family-oriented pack animals at others. All in all, their general demeanor very much reflects my own personality and behavior. Not to mention the association between hyenas and laughter!

Creation

Much like the image above, I researched as many pictures of this creature as I could find. What I found was that all striped hyenas look different from one another. They share the stripes and dark coloration on their ankles and faces, and the distinct tufts of hair outlining the front and back of their necks. After looking through enough pictures, I sketched out a few designs until I created a very distinct look for a striped hyena to have, and one that would fit how I wanted to be represented.

I tend to exaggerate features I find interesting in an almost Dr. Seussian style, and as such I gave Zelaphas such long chest hair it nearly drapes to the floor. In the photos of striped hyenas I saw, I noticed their ears came in all sorts of odd shapes and sizes, and I gave Zel some embarrassingly large and twisted ears as a result. I loved the stripes on the ankles, which I feel make whatever pose the creature is in (be it stationary or in movement) more interesting. I didn’t like how some striped hyenas had stripe overload all over their bodies, so outside of a handful of stripes on Zel’s rear back, the rest of her body is white or grey. Additionally, I wanted to give Zel some features that most creatures don’t have; Most creatures have a lighter underside and a darker backside to blend in with their environment. Zel, however, has a slightly darker belly and a completely black underside to her tail.

I also created Zel at a time that I was venturing more heavily into graphic and web design, and wanted to create something that would lend itself to a particular design scheme, possibly for Twitter or whatever other sites I sunk my teeth into. Ever since I was young, pink and blue has been a favorite color combo of mine, so I used a dull pink for Zel’s fleshy features and a bright blue for her eyes.

I felt the striped pattern deserved some sort of repetition on the face, and thus Zel got some odd, white stripes over her eyes to help them stand out a bit more against the black and dark grey. Although her mane was originally a dark grey, I later added in black stripes to add more interest and color variance to the overall design.

It took a lot of drawing and re-drawing before I finalized the design, but after tweaking the features I mentioned above, I was able to settle on a design that was true to the nature of a striped hyena, over-emphasized per my own style, fairly unique and overall interesting and appealing to the eye.

Bringing Zelaphas to Life

Name

According to His Dark Materials, a daemon isn’t given a name; it has one at the moment of its owner’s birth, and the owner simply knows it. Once the owner comes into knowledge of words and names, it simply looks at its daemon and knows what its name should be. In the same vein, many of the fan sites I visited suggested you name your own daemon, however real or imagined, in the same way – simply think of it, and know what it should be called. Perhaps because hyenas are associated with laughter that I had the word “laugh” in mind, but the rest of the syllables forming the name Ze-laph-as just sort of spilled out.

Gender

Originally, Zelaphas was a male. This is because in the world of His Dark Materials, daemons are the opposite sex as their owners (with a few exceptions). I introduced Zel to the Internet as a male character and as my imaginary daemon, but more recently I decided Zel should instead simply represent myself within the anthro fandom, since I otherwise had no anthro persona for myself. Zelaphas is now simply “me” as a striped hyena.

Use

I’ve grown more interest in drawing Zelaphas and bringing her to life through art now that I’ve finalized her design and decided to use her as my representation. As per my post on MFF ‘09, I used the name Zelaphas for my attendance badge. As I may attend more conventions or other events in the future, I will probably continue to use Zelaphas and proudly display art of her when I go.