Local Faceless Being Descends Mysterious Portal Staircase.

Local faceless being descends mysterious portal staircase.

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Why do I start ridiculous projects when I'm tired? Poor impulse control I guess.

Possibly to be a shoe thing that'll force you to stand on your toes. I’ve probably been looking at too many pony play blogs on twitter while trying to find other people making cool masks.

I have no idea if it'll work. When I’m less busy (haha good joke) I’ll pull a pattern off it and make it out of something sturdy and find out. If it even marginally works I’ll probably end up figuring out how to make hooves for it.

Hooray for cobbling (ha!) together some shoes.

Testing out making leather masks sized to fit fursuit heads, and I think it worked pretty well! I think I'll have a small stack of them at my table at Anthro New England!

I could do any of my small masks like this, so if you’re going and would like a specific design/color, let me know and I can make one for you. Otherwise I’ll just have a mix of colors and styles to choose from.

Since I expect there's a lot of variation in fursuit face shapes and sizes, I think the way it'll work is to bring them dyed+sealed, but not formed, and the process will involve meeting with people in the evening to saran wrap their heads and form the leather, then they bring it back to their rooms and let it dry for a few hours.

How often do you lay awake late at night pondering the deep mysteries of the universe, like "What if fortune cookies were pointy?"

Well, you can rest easy now. I got you.

This leather torso armor has been my Big Project for the week while my normal-job boss is out of town. I made it to go with the robot/drone dragon mask I made earlier (which I still need to make a final post about, ugh). 

The mask I designed digitally, but this one was done entirely by hand. I’d had this duct tape dummy torso haunting my room since March (when I didn’t actually need to cut it up for my Magic Meat March costume), so I used it to make the pattern to ensure a good fit to my body.

This project took approximately 30 hours of work from sketch to completion. I made good time, and got photos of basically the whole process, so click the images for commentary if you want to follow along. I’d been aiming to have it done in time for Halloween, though I got some extra time because my local harass-the-townsfolk-in-costume group postponed our outing for a day due to rain.

I was really happy to finally get to make a big armor piece like this. I’ve honestly been intimidated for years by the idea of making a breastplate, and was holding off until I’d built up confidence and skills on smaller pieces. And I think that paid off. While designing this project, I was able to foresee and deal with basically all the issues that would come up (mostly assembly issues of how pieces would fit together). And it meant that when it came time to assemble everything, I actually didn’t run into any problems. The final assembly came together flawlessly.

The design does have a bit of a quirk. I decided to prioritize the aesthetic over functionality a bit--I really wanted to maintain the bands of leather unbroken over the whole piece, so I put the closure in the back with corset-style laces instead of the more practical buckles-at-the-side option. Which means you have to undo the laces super wide and wriggle it over your head, and the shoulders really don’t want to let your arms through. It’s a bit awkward, to put it lightly. But honestly, for a personal project, that’s fine.

For now I think this project will stay mine. It’s very specifically fitted, and I don’t yet know how I’d make it to fit other people. It’s basically fitted like a whole-torso corset. But I’ll be mulling over more modular and adjustable armor design ideas.

Small scale maille dragon tail! Been a while since I made a short one like this, it’s nice and cute.

It measures just over 24 inches long, and the spade tip adds about 2.5 inches onto that. The scales are black anodized aluminum, and the spade tip is black acrylic. It weighs in at 2 pounds 5 ounces.

One of the funny things that struck me was how it feels subtly different to wear. The most common length of tail I make is about 3 feet long, and those swing like pendulums at about the speed that your hips naturally sway when you walk. This one swings much faster, so it tends towards quicker, bouncier movements.

Which is to say, big ones sway, little ones wiggle.