Fursuit Partial Video

[S. Heslop]

Yikes thats a hell of a thumbnail.


Haven't posted much lately since i've been up to some strange stuff, this mask being one of those things.

It's not the first mask I made. I made this one in the run-up to a convention and ended up not wearing it because... well... it's a little scary.



There's two big schools of thought in the fursuit world, the 'toony' and the realistic. As a modest guy (or I was more modest back then!) I went for the realistic sort. They can look great in photos, if a little corny. But in motion they're a bit static. Kinda reminds me of taxidermy. My attempt sure does!

So the idea was to try offset that with some light animatronics. Not much room to fit servos but I figured anything would help. The idea was to control them with a 4 buttons embedded in a glove. I figure if you practised you could hit combinations of the buttons as you talk to match basic phonemes.

The animatronics didn't work out so great. The small servos burned out fairly quickly, and the stouter ones I bought and installed on route to the convention overloaded the power supply. For the 10 seconds it did work a friend said something like 'the mask looks hideous but when it was moving, it actually looked pretty good'.

Kinda wish I left it like this. It's the kinda thing a modern movie bankrobber might wear to really freak out the tellers.


After making that first mask I slapped another together as an excersise in how quickly (and cheaply!) I could make one if I cut corners. As of right now its kinda falling apart. Mostly due to the hot glue not wanting to hold to the urethane. Normal epoxy doesn't do much better, so I think rivets or maybe a specialist epoxy are the way to go if you're using urethane.




Anyways the hope was that i'd sang a sale so I could put the money towards a 3d printer. They charge over £1000 or some crap for the big ones, which are mostly just constructed from those standard aluminium extrusions. So I was planning to build my own. Tried alot of ideas in sketchup and was starting to settle on this.



It's somewhat overbuilt to begin with, but I couldn't find any source for thin walled 100x50 ERW tube and picked up some 3mm thick hot rolled instead. I was starting to cut holes in the stuff to try lighten it - I wouldn't be able to lift the machine by myself if I left them bare. Before realising that it was... kinda stupid. So right now i'm looking at those delta designs since they seem much easier to construct and fairly efficient with materials. But as always it's money thats delaying it, as well as a secret side project.

I've never been big on 3d printers. I think it's mostly since they were introduced as a hobby device (right after the FDM patents expired) along with a bunch of bizarre saving the world style hot air. 'Imagine if African babies could Empowered to manufacture their own lumpy parts - using complicated CNC machines and hard to source plastic fiber'. That kind of nonsense still exists around the machines, don't get me started on that manufactured media farce about the 3d printed gun, but i've had to begrudgingly admit that the're probably the best solution to the problem of each mask being a different shape to match character and the wearer's head. It'd also help with being able to work backwards from the target look instead of having to make alot of leaps of faith and hoping for the best while building it.

But what I really want to get back into is the animatronics idea. I've got alot of thoughts on that whole angle.

[vtsteam]

WOW! 

[millwright]

As they used to say on Monty Python "And now for something completely different" and it certainly was, Really enjoyed that very informative,  interesting, a great looking mask, and a well put together video 

john

[tom osselton]

Here in Calgary there was a kids oriented mostly pizza place that had a animated Hillbilly Bear band that was a great success along with arcade games for the b-day crowd but it was bought out by Chucky Cheez and was shut down a sad day for a lot of people!
I just remembered it’s name Bullwinkles!

[S. Heslop]

Here in Calgary there was a kids oriented mostly pizza place that had a animated Hillbilly Bear band that was a great success along with arcade games for the b-day crowd but it was bought out by Chucky Cheez and was shut down a sad day for a lot of people!
I just remembered it’s name Bullwinkles!

I've heard about those places. I don't know if they ever made it to the UK, not where I live at least. One of my earlier memories was being terrified by a guy in a Charlie Chalk costume and throwing balls in his direction from the restraunt's ball pit. Explains why I didn't get invited to many birthday parties. But I can only imagine how much more a bunch of robots would've spooked me.

[S. Heslop]

Wowza I wrote an insane rambling post about my animatronic thoughts. Gotta try keep it somewhat concise!

I've been going in circles for a while thinking about this and reading increasingly esoteric stuff, including a bunch of scientific journals and patents. The main problems i've got is how to control the movements, and also that i'd ideally like to handle the eyes with some kind of thin display - and ideally a dome shaped one but i'd settle for a cylindrical section.

Flexible displays are a long time coming, so the two most promising angles I can think of are some kind of rear projected display using one of those laser picoprojectors, or a fused fiber faceplate ground into a dome - although those have viewing angle issues. With displays blocking vision out of the mask i'd also need some sort of alternative way to see out. Perhaps head mounted displays like the drone guys use, and cameras hidden somewhere, or some kind of character specific workaround like a cyborg. The cool kind -> , and you can wreck your eyesight looking through a semi-silvered window with one eye.

The other big issue is how to actually drive the mechanical parts. Various types of muscle wires all have their shortcomings, and the most available ones (as in they actually exist) all work on the idea of heating and cooling. The cooling seems like the tricky part, as well as not being too energy efficient. I think the more practical solution might be to just have an external unit full of servos, and PTFE capillary tubes acting as a kind of bowden cable along with music wire into the head. I've yet to test that idea though. But again you could make a feature out of that if you go full cyborg!

And the final big issue is how to handle the fleshy parts. Most movie prop stuff is interesting, but not very durable. It only has to last as long as the shoot! Latex foam starts to rot fairly quickly, and the most promising long lasting alternative might be silicone foam. But being silicone there's of course problems with adhering to it. I figure solid rubbers would be hard work for the servos to manipulate. Plus the 4 way stretch furs that are available aren't too durable either. So maybe some kind of reptile instead of a hairy mammal. Cyborg lizard! But really i'd like a more versatile solution that can work with almost anything.

It all sounds very expensive but then these costumes tend to be. Some time last year a mere comission slot for one... artist... was auctioned off for $70,000 if I remember right. But really that was a special case. I think some people try buy their way into popularity and i've met people who've bragged about getting a suit made by an EXCLUSIVE maker, as if its proof of their standing within the community. It's kind of disillusioned me a bit.

[vtsteam]

Well, you could think of it like the more traditional men's suits -- there are expensive and society tailors for them, mass produced suits and outlets, as well as people who sew their own, probably. It is in some ways, no different. It is clothing, just not conventional clothing. There are all kinds of people in every kind of society.

[PekkaNF]

I don't get the fursuit part, but I really liked your video and this thread. All those soft castings and materials are completely alien to me, very much new information and processes to me.

Thank you very much

[S. Heslop]

Well, you could think of it like the more traditional men's suits -- there are expensive and society tailors for them, mass produced suits and outlets, as well as people who sew their own, probably. It is in some ways, no different. It is clothing, just not conventional clothing. There are all kinds of people in every kind of society.

Suits are a good analogy. If you made your own outlandish and ~innovative~ business suits then most people would think you looked like a clown. Suits are about blending in but just ever so slightly signalling your societal status. I'm starting to sound like a misanthrope!

Speaking of suits though, one of my future project ideas is trying to make the most garish suit possible. The 90s was a great age for wild suits on TV. Richard O'Brien on the Crystal Maze, Cat on Red Dwarf, Quark on Deep Space 9... they always catch my eye.

I think African fabrics are the way to go. There's some truly nauseating patterns on that page.



I also like the cat tapestry fabric. Tapestry fabrics are a whole genre.

Sewing is a really underappreciated skill. As in, I can barely do it and i'm amazed that anyone can. So i'm in mind to get better at it.

I don't get the fursuit part, but I really liked your video and this thread. All those soft castings and materials are completely alien to me, very much new information and processes to me.

Thank you very much

Thanks for the kind comment. I'm not sure if I really understand it either.

[WeldingRod]

It turns out that silicone is easy to bond!
Either use silicone caulk (if you want fully flexible) or rubber toughened superglue (loctite black max).  You MUST use a heptane based primer with copper Sulfate in it.  Allow the primer to dry, then glue it.
I had to do some measurements of silicone bonding strength on Aluminum, and I needed a way to attach the pull test dollies.  Worked like a charm, and the rubber would either come off of the plate I was testing, or it would tear the bulk rubber.  A superglue failure was really rare (just a couple in 50 or so tests).

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

[WeldingRod]

You could use modern furby eyes with a colored filter over them.  They are round micro lcd displays with a backlight.  I bet you could change the backlight source to another color!

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[S. Heslop]

It turns out that silicone is easy to bond!
Either use silicone caulk (if you want fully flexible) or rubber toughened superglue (loctite black max).  You MUST use a heptane based primer with copper Sulfate in it.  Allow the primer to dry, then glue it.
I had to do some measurements of silicone bonding strength on Aluminum, and I needed a way to attach the pull test dollies.  Worked like a charm, and the rubber would either come off of the plate I was testing, or it would tear the bulk rubber.  A superglue failure was really rare (just a couple in 50 or so tests).

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G891A using Tapatalk

That's fantastic information! Thanks for posting it.

I'm not as happy to hear they found a way to make furbies even more horrific though.


Edit: To add to that a bit. I've not found alot of people trying to glue silicones on the internet, and all i've found are a few product pitches that promise the world. So I appreciate hearing about something that works.