Furball was an attempt back in 1996 to obtain a reasonably realistic, easy to animate, fur effect for some of my character designs. Imagine Version 4 (on the Amiga) allowed the attachment of one object to all the surface normals of another object (Imagine described it as a particle effect). Build one cluster of hairs as an object, apply it to the normals of the area you want hairy, apply a fur colour texture map, set a little transparency and you have one simple hairy Furball that moves really well when you deform the shape of the skin.