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GIMPIN' Along

7/2/2020

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Photographing my first partial "Silas" for sale presented new challenges. I have an indoor tabletop setup to take pictures of smaller things, such as masks, eBay sales items and (not so) occasionally model horses. Unfortunately, the basement where I have my setup is too small with too low of a ceiling to be able to photograph an entire figure. My first thought was the great outdoors, but the lighting can be hit or miss, especially with a dark object like Silas.
black wolf fursuit partial by sans souci studios



​Here are some quick outdoor photos of Silas. It's difficult to see much detail in the partial as the lighting isn't quite right. I could fiddle with my camera settings to try to get a better exposure, but my faithful model and husband has breathing difficulties, and so can only wear the mask for maybe five minutes tops. Not much time for fiddling. 
black wolf fursuit partial by Sans Souci Studios





​My husband and I could theoretically switch roles, with me modelling and him taking pictures, but unfortunately photography is not my husband's strong suit. I'm modelling here while my daughter is taking pictures. She's a good photographer but has limited patience for these endeavors. Still, most importantly, you can see that the exposure is still not great and not a lot of detail is visible in the mask.

The beginnings of an indoor setup! My husband, a teacher, had just made a video with his kids at school and so was all excited about the idea of a green screen, so that's what we got for a backdrop. I learned shortly afterwards that any color solid backdrop would have worked, and a non green backdrop would have worked better, as the green threw up a lot of green reflections on the partial which had to be edited out later. But that's what GIMP is for. My floodlights from my tabletop setup worked just fine, though it was a pain to carry them up from the basement to the living room, which had taller ceilings.   

And....a downside of indoor setups like this one... cats love 'em. This older cat was relatively well behaved but our younger cat had to be locked out of the room, as she wanted to play with the backdrop REAL BAD and nearly pulled all the stands into every last item in the living room, including my beloved model horse collection.
green screen setup with cat
green screen setup
green screen setup with fursuit wolf head
green screen setup with wolf fursuit head
green screen setup with fursuit wolf head
The advantage of an indoor setup is that you can play with the floodlights until you get the lighting exactly the way you want it, and you don't need to put on the mask until you are happy with how the lighting looks. (Plus you don't even need to get dressed to go outside!)  The backdrop material is fairly thin, and in these practice photos above and  below you can see a square of light from a window shining through. We waited until dark for the official photoshoot, though as it turned out it wasn't difficult to edit the square out either.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Above, my daughter mugging it up, and the first attempt to remove the green screen with GIMP. The urban backdrop on the right is one we cut and pasted from online to give this all a whirl. 




​(Photobomb..... )
green screen with wolf fursuit partial and cat
barre vermont pearl street granite sculpture



​If I were going to go through all the trouble of learning how to remove figures from their backgrounds, I wanted some cool backdrops to stick them on after! I took this picture on Pearl Street in my hometown of Barre, VT, a new pedestrian walkway featuring a granite sculpture of a castle. (Barre was given a large bequest by a wealthy resident, which was used among other things to commission a number of granite statues commemorating Barre's long history of quarrying and stoneworking.) It only seemed fitting to incorporate images of other local artists' handiwork along with my own.  
And, TA DAAAAH! The original greenscreen photographs with the finished pictures on the new backgrounds.

All I can say for learning GIMP is, GIMP Workshop baby!!! These videos were very easy to follow and the guy's voice was very calm and soothing, which helped keep me from freaking out and throwing my computer out the window on more than one occasion. Especially helpful were these videos- this one on how to remove an object from its background and this one on how to remove a furry object from its background. This one, in addition to being about removing an object from its background also had info about how to make simple shadows and remove colored reflections (like the green on Silas' fur and jacket).
green screen with wolf fursuit partial by sans souci studiosPicture
wolf fursuit partial by sans souci studios
green screen setup with wolf fursuit partial by sans souci studios
wolf fursuit partial by sans souci studios






​Background photo number two, also of the granite castle sculpture on Pearl Street in Barre....
barre vermont pearl street granite sculpture
Below, images made with this second background photo. And more GIMP workshop videos that were helpful: These three on the Path Tool, a basic operation on GIMP, video one, video two and video three. And a video about how to make shadows, though this one turned out to be more elaborate and complicated than I really needed. The shadows underneath Silas in these finished photos were all created with GIMP.
green screen setup with wolf fursuit partial
wolf fursuit partial by sans souci studios
green screen setup with wolf partial fursuit by sans souci studios
wolf partial fursuit by sans souci studios
I decided I wanted to do a collage of all my photos for Silas' auction. The photo below was meant to be the background for the collage. In it I learned to do a cool new thing called the Orton effect, a somewhat blurry, dreamy,  and light-filled affair. 
wolf fursuit head by sans souci studios
And actual videos on how to do collage in GIMP, video one and video two. 
wolf fursuit partial by sans souci studios
And TA DAAAAHHHH!!!! Finished GIMP photos. I'm very happy to say that Silas' auction was successful and he has since gone on to a new home.
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Making a Quick and Simple Spray Booth for Airbrushing

11/8/2019

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Geez, I had no idea it's been so long since I've updated my blog! But I have been working steadily and hope to have a new mask to auction soon. Part of the holdup was having a place to paint. 
Spray booth for airbrushing made out of rigid insulation
Diagram showing spray booth and air circulation in room
​I followed the instructions for building a simple spray booth I found in this article in Fine Woodworking magazine. (Link to the article can be found here.) The two illustrations to the left sum up the most relevant info nicely. In summary, the booth is made out of rigid foam insulation and the sides and back are fastened together with duct tape, so it is lightweight, foldable, and easy to transport. The back panel has a hole cut in the center into which a furnace filter is placed. A box fan is set behind the hole for drawing air through the filter. 








The booth is placed in a way to take the best advantage of the room's air circulation, with sources of fresh air in front of it and a means of venting painty air behind it. Since there is no actual ductwork to contain the fumes, the booth does not exhaust them completely, but I can attest that it does cut down considerably the painty mist that otherwise hangs over my work area.  

It's important to note that this booth is only for water based paints such as acrylics. It is definitely not suitable for solvent based paints, that's a whole nuther animal entirely!  

 .





​And now, time for my own booth. ​​Before I did anything else, I made a mockup out of scrap cardboard, to be sure that I would like the dimensions and find it comfortable to work in. I actually wound up doing a fair bit of painting in this mock-up. 
Cardboard mock up of spray  booth for airbrushing a fursuit head



Right, my own booth in progress. ​I used one 4' x 8' sheet of 1/2" thick insulation that I purchased at the local lumberyard. I chose a white color so that as much light as possible would be reflected back onto my work. Since the fiberglass inside the panel was very irritating to my hands, I also put duct tape over all the cut edges to contain it. It's white, so it's hard to see here.  






Spraybooth made of rigid insulation for airbrushing a fursuit head
furnace filter in a DIY spray booth for airbrushing
furnace filter in a DIY spraybooth for airbrushing
​Left, making sure the furnace filter is installed correctly! The arrow has to match the direction of the airflow when the filter is installed.

The filter is a basic, inexpensive one. According to the Fine Woodworking article, a higher grade of filter, one that could screen out microbes, dander, and such, would get filled with paint and plug up too quickly. Here you can also see the duct tape I applied around all the cut edges to contain irritating fiberglass.




​ I also added bulb weatherstripping around the outside of the filter, under the theory it would make the booth more airtight. I'm not sure it was worth the effort. In trying to get the weatherstripping into the gaps I sometimes had to make the gaps larger, so I may have been working counter to my purpose.
​ 
 
plexiglass top for DIY spray booth for airbrushing
diy spray booth made of rigid insulation for airbrushing
 Above, the top for the booth. (Check out how dirty the filter got after only a few uses!) I made the top out of 1/4" plexiglass, not the insulation as in the Fine Woodworking article, as I wanted to be able to get as much light as possible in the booth. Portland Glass cut a piece to my specifications for around $30.  I made a "lip" out of the insulation and hot glued it to the plexi to help keep it in place.
 
diy spray booth for airbrushing a fursuit head
And, ready to rock and roll! Let's get this party started!
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Handpaw Hijinx

3/17/2019

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Teens modelling handpaws



​So I've made two heads, and now I want to learn to make tails and paws to go with them!! Whee!!! My last blog post covered my tail making adventures, now it's time to move on to paws. Here, my daughter and her BFF model the first two sets I made.
 


Teens modelling handpaws

​While in theory it should not have been too difficult to make a pattern for a tail, I wound up going through three versions before I came up with one I liked. So I was delighted to find Freakhound's free and extremely cool paw patterns online. As it was, I was going to have to learn a ton of new skilz in order to make handpaws, so it was really nice to have that one less thing to worry about.  Click here if you want to check the patterns out.


​

 Some of the things I learned included using bias tape to edge the cuff (Matrices' tutorial here) and appliquing toebeans (Matrices' tutorial here) (and Kloofsuits' here). While Freakhound's pattern includes pretty complete instructions, I also got a lot of good information on general construction from Kloofsuits's two handpaw tutorials (part one) and (part two). These include instructions for doing the toebeans as little "pillows" sewn into the hand instead of applique, and a very good demonstration on making liners.

One thing I haven't found anywhere, however, is clear instructions on adding resin claws. All the instructions I have found are for sewn, fabric claws. So I'll have to figure that out for myself. Supposedly it's just cutting a hole in the fingertips and gluing them in, right? 
Teen handpaw battle
Teen handpaw high five
fursuit handpaws with appliqued toebeans and resin claws
My first pair of practice handpaws, made out of my "cheap" white fur. The toebeans are appliqued vinyl, the claws are resin. The cuffs have a bias tape edging and no lining, since early on in my online explorations I had read that linings were a luxury, good only for retaining sweat. However I found the resin claws made the tips of the fingers floppy and stuffing was helpful in stiffening them. And a liner is useful in separating the stuffing from the hands. Which  brings me to...
Fursuit handpaws with sewn in pillow toebeans and resin claws
My second pair of practice handpaws. These do have a lining as well as the bias tape edging. The toebeans are felt "pillows" sewn into the white fabric, a method Kloofsuits describes in her tutorials above. This method needs less skill than applique to yield a very nice result, though it takes much more time and patience. (This is what podcasts are for!) Even though these were just practice handpaws I wish I had used fabric other than felt, as it pilled all to hell in about two seconds and looks awful. At this point I'm also feeling frustrated by the claws. They look crooked and haphazard in both sets of paws, pointing in whichever direction they feel like when I glue them in, no matter how careful I try to be.
resin claws for fursuit handpaws
So down into the basement I go to sculpt, mold and cast new claws. I based these on the claws in Freakhound's pattern hoping they would better harmonize with the overall handpaw design. I made the originals out of Apoxie Sculpt and polished them to a high shine using the Novus plastic polish system.  I made two modifications to the bases of the claws in the hope that they'd more likely to wind up straight in the fingertips: I made them oval, not round, so I could tell which were the tops and undersides of the claws from the inside of the paw, and I  drilled holes in them for stitching the claws in to the paws to keep them steady while gluing.
black fursuit handpaws with resin claws
And the a third set of paws, this time made of "good" fabric, with faux suede sewn-in "pillow" toe beans and the new resin claws. I'm pretty happy with how these look.

​These paws also have a different kind of cuff than the bias tape edging that Matrices demonstrates. I was OK with less than perfection with the two practice sets of handpaws, but since I'm hoping to sell them I wanted these black handpaws to be perfect. The bias tape edging defied me four times on these paws, and four times I ripped it off. I wound up buying Kloofsuit's deluxe handpaw pattern just for the instructions on this kind of cuff, and I'm very happy I did. The download is available to purchase here.
fursuit handpaw cuffs
And, giving the handpaws a try!
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A Tale of Tails

3/12/2019

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sketching a pattern for a fursuit wolf tail


​I've made two furry heads! Yay! Next, making tails and paws to go with them! Whee!! This blog post will cover my tail making adventures, the next will cover my forays into paws.

First, a pattern! Pressing my poor kid into service as a model,  and sketching a pattern for a wolf tail. (My kid is begging the cat to come rescue her.) 
Next, hitting the Interwebs for all the tailmaking tutorials I could find.  Kloofsuits' was one of my favorites (view here). Switch Cosplay's was another (view here). The biggest difference I found between these two was the their methods for making the belt loops, Kloofsuits' below left and Switch Cosplay's below right. (That's my very helpful hubby holding the tails up and mugging it up for the camera.) I ultimately decided on Switch Cosplay's method, as the loops were less visible when the tail was worn by itself on a belt. Kloofsuits' method is less fiddly and probably stronger, but I suspect it's meant for tails to be worn through a hole in a fullsuit, where the loops would not be visible anyway. 
loops on a fursuit tail
loops on a fursuit tail
Picture




 Wait a minute, math?? These equations are for figuring out the diameter of the tail "cap" in Switch Copslay's method if I had the measurements of the end of the tail, and vice versa. These saved me endless amounts of trial and error and frustration. (Thanks to my ever amazing hubby for coming up with these for me!)
fursuit tail patterns
I also did a lot of experimenting with the same pattern using different numbers of pieces, placements of seams, and direction of fur, the sketch above showing the different variations I tried. The one on the far left represents a tail made of two halves sewn together front and back. The advantage is obvious- super simple to make. The second one from the left is made of four pieces and has a seam going down either side as well. This helps give the tail a fuller, rounder look. The third pattern is made of eight pieces and is good for a tail with a black or white tip, and would also allow the fur to follow the tip's curve more closely. The last one is made of twelve pieces and can be used for a tail with a different colored underside, and allows the fur at the top to follow that curve more closely. I made all of these tails out of my solid, "cheap" white fur to be able to see any difference most clearly, and while I did like the way the fourth variation came out the best, I'm not sure I liked it that much better to justify the extra time it took. We will see. One thing I DID like about the fourth variation is that I could cut it out of my fabric with much less waste, since it was easier to fit the smaller pattern pieces on odds and ends I had on hand.
 white fursuit handpaws and wolf tails
white fursuit handpaws and wolf tails
Here I am, experimenting on kids again. (They are expressing their sentiments on the matter, though that is harder to do with four fingered handpaws). Both these tails are made from the same pattern,  but the one on my long haired daughter is the two piece variation, and the other on her BFF is the four piece one, with a seam running down the sides as well as the front and back. The thing that struck me most about these tails however was the way they seemed to come out of the kids' back at right angles, which made them look more like horse tails than wolf tails. Back to the drawing board.
white fursuit wolf tail
altering a fursuit tail pattern
Above, tail pattern, take two.  While I like this one better I still think it comes out of the back at too sharp of an angle. As I often do, I printed out the photo and sketched ideas for changes on it, and used that for a reference for the third pattern.
white fursuit wolf tail
white fursuit wolf tail
white fursuit wolf tail
 Above, showing tails I made from the three patterns I did side by side, the one on the right being one being the one I ultimately wound up using. You can see the different angles at which they come out of the  back. The one on the left is the four piece variation, the other two are the most complicated twelve piece one.
fursuit wolf tail and handpaws
And TA DA!!! A finished tail, made out of "good" fur, intended to be part of a partial! This is the variation made with twelve pieces, with my third pattern above. Can't wait to start the head. Whee!!!!
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Attempting casting resin in two colors, part three- success!!!

1/13/2019

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 Check it out! Jawsets cast in two different colors! Aren't they bee-oootyful??
resin canine jawset cast in two colors
resin canine jawset cast in two colors
I decided to try a method I had thought about before but had dismissed as too difficult- making separate models of gums and teeth, making sure they fit well together beforehand, and then molding them. I knew that teeth and gum components carefully cut apart from a single a rubber jawset model and molded separately would make casts that would fit back together with no problem. However, as I wrote about in a previous blog post, the repeated  molding and casting in rubber that this method requires caused  bubbles to build up in the casts over time. Yuck!!

So I would use teeth I cut out of a resin cast to make that part of the mold. I would use a plasticine  "borrowed casting" of the gums (I talk more about this technique in this blog post), physically removing any bubbles before molding it. Bubbles can be removed from plasticine but not from rubber!  I would make sure the teeth and the gums fit very well together before making molds of either. The big challenge would be not squishing the models and ruining the fit during this process.


Jawset model in the freezer
 SIlicone rubber tipped clay shaping tools
​

Which brings us to this picture. Why, you may reasonably ask, is there a jawset model in my freezer? Very simply, freezing the clay helps keep squishing to a minimum, so I can check the teeth and gums for fit and do as little damage as possible. This kind of plasticine, Monster Clay, contains a high amount of wax, so it freezes very well. 






Pictured here are another secret weapon in my arsenal, rubber tipped shaping tools. These also helped keep squishing to a minimum, as they made it possible to apply just the tiniest, most precise amount of pressure to only the areas it was needed. Unlike big fat fingers.


​
Clay gum models for resin canine jawset
Above, the plasticine gum models in their Lego mold boxes, ready for rubber.

Right, rubber poured over the models. Coloring it like this helps to show when the two parts of the rubber are fully mixed, so that it can be stirred only as much as necessary, avoiding excess bubbles. Pouring the rubber into the molds from relatively high up, in a thin, slow stream, also helps to break bubbles that have formed while stirring. Brushing a thin coat of rubber over the model, letting it partly set, and then pouring the rest of the rubber in also helps, as bubbles trapped against the model can more easily rise to the surface and break that way.
 Pouring mold rubber for a canine resin jawset


And, resin gums poured into the two new molds.
Casting resin gums for a canine resin jawset
 
Teeth waiting for mold rubber for a canine resin jawset



​Teeth waiting for rubber in their own Lego mold box...
Mold rubber poured over teeth for a canine resin jawset
Picture


​And rubber poured. Another thing that helps eliminate bubbles is tapping the mold box on the work table after the rubber is poured, to help the bubbles rise up to the surface and break.









 (I found myself often thinking of this scene from Finding Nemo during this whole thing...)


​Resin gums cast into one mold, teeth into the other...
Resin teeth and gums cast for a  canine jawset





​And, teeth and gums removed from the molds, and... THEY FIT TOGETHER!!! YAAAAAYYYYY!!!!
Putting together teeth and gums for a resin canine jawset
I said it before, and I'll say it again... aren't they bee-ootyful???!!!
Resin canine jawset  cast in two colors
Resin canine jawsets cast in two colors
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Attempting casting resin in two colors, part two

12/30/2018

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silicone rubber canine jawset










I don't remember what inspired me to make the upper half of a jawset out of blue silicone rubber, nor what inspired me to use it as a window cling in the dining room. However seeing it hanging there gave me a new idea to try for a two part mold. So here goes!
Below, cutting the teeth away from the rubber jawset as neatly and carefully as possible, and then cutting holes through the entire thickness of the piece. Then, inserting it back into the original mold. The idea is to pour white resin into the mold for teeth, remove the blue part, and then pour pink resin for the gums.
Making a mold for a resin canine jawset
Making a mold for a resin canine jawset
Casting a resin canine jawset in two  colors


​Here goes nothing! The white resin is poured into the mold. (The mold on the left hand side is for claws.)

Casting a resin canine jawset in two colors






​The blue mold piece is removed, leaving the white teeth in the translucent mold piece.








Pouring the pink resin into the mold. It overflowed a little to one side, not a big deal as it can be trimmed off after it sets up.
Casting a resin canine jawset in two colors
Below, the final product. Not too bad. (Tangent alert- the stuff that looks like pink slime is in fact pink slime. When resin is overloaded with colorant it will not cure properly. I was using Smooth-Cast 65D here, a white resin, and I had to put in too much colorant in order to get a color other than very pale pink. The saints at the Smooth On tech support department recommended I switch to a transparent resin, Color Match 325, which I did.)
Resin canine jawset in two colors overloaded with pigment
After I made a bunch more of these I decided this method may  not  be everything I hoped it would be. Sometimes pink resin would leak down over the white teeth and while I could carefully scrape it off before the resin set completely, this was something I'd rather not spend my time doing. Also, I would  get thin spots or bubbles between the teeth and the gums at times, which would make for weak castings (I could crush in these spots with my fingers) which was definitely something I did not want. Time to try another method. Onwards!
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Attempting casting resin in two colors, part one

12/29/2018

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Resin canine  jawset cast in two colors


So I was unenamoured with airbrushing, at least when it came to painting jawsets, and I decided to attempt to cast them in two different colors of resin. The saints at the Smooth On tech support department recommended I pour one color of resin over the other before it had a chance to set up fully.To the left, the result. Um, no.
 Some sort of two part mold would seem to be the answer, one for the teeth and the other for the gums. My first thought was to cut the teeth out of a resin jawset with my Dremel, insert them back into the original mold, and make a model of just the gums from which to make a second mold. Below, getting ready to pour silicone for the model.
 Casting jawset parts in silicone rubber
 Casting jawset parts in silicone rubber
Casting a jawset model in silicone rubber






Removing the cured rubber from the mold, with the teeth still attached. It would appear I have my model from which to make a mold for the gums. (The fabric was added while the rubber was curing, so that I'd have something to glue the models down to the mold board with afterwards. It wouldn't work so well to just glue the silicone to the mold board, as cured silicone doesn't stick to much of anything.)









Here goes nothing! Pouring the silicone over the models for the new gum mold. (The snaky thing on the far right is an attempt at a lip.)
 Casting jawset parts in silicone rubber
Making molds for jawset parts from silicone rubber
Below, pink resin gums cast from these new molds, with teeth inserted temporarily. Looks pretty good but....
Resin canine jawset cast in two colors

Damn. The round thing in the middle is leftover resin that cured in the mixing cup. See how nice and smooth it is? See how full of bubbles the gums are? There's lots and lots of things that cause bubbles in castings but here it's due to replicative failure. Each time I demold rubber from rubber, microscopic layers peel away from the surface, creating these bubbles in the mold. (Even if I'm using plenty of release. Which can also cause bubbles, damn!!) Three times I poured rubber into rubber to make these, adding more bubbles with every step.
Bubbles in cast resin
What to do next? Maybe at some point in the future I could investigate stronger rubber, but in the meantime, maybe I should go back to making molds from original sculpts whenever possible. 
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Airbrushing fails

12/28/2018

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Canine resin jawset masked for airbrushing
Canine Resin jawset being airbrushed








Ah, trying to airbrush jawsets with white teeth and pink gums. Much easier said than done. First, the paint has to stick. Second, it has to go where you want it and not where you don't.


If there is even a trace of release on the cast forget it, the paint will not stick. The good news is, resin cast into silicone rubber doesn't really need release! Yay! Unfortunately the paint doesn't like to stick to bare resin either, and according to the saints at Smooth On Technical Support there are very few primers that will help. One is the Bulldog Adhesion Promoter shown here. The other is Plasticote Sandable Primer Enamel.


The areas where paint is not wanted need to be masked. What to use? Liquid frisket came first to mind, here applied with silicone shaper tools. (The frisket would quickly ruin a regular paintbrush.) For me, this was very tricky and took several hours to apply. I only attempted masking the teeth with the frisket, as I was completely daunted by the much larger surface area of the gums.

.




Below, the gums airbrushed and the frisket removed.
Airbrushed canine resin jawset
Not too bad, except that the paint was still fairly fragile and the frisket would pull bits of it off around the gumline. I was not convinced this would be the go to method.
Canine resin jawset masked for airbrushing
Canine resin jawset being airbrushed
Airbrushed canine resin jawset






I hit the airbrush forums looking for a mask less fiddly than frisket, and found.... Poster Putty.



















Not bad, but not great either. The putty more or less worked, but the gumline was messy, and I'd like to avoid this much touching up with a paintbrush if at all possible.




And back to the message boards. Another recommended masking material- SIlly Putty!!
Canine resin jawset masked for airbrushing with silly putty





It kinda worked, but....
Airbrushed canine resin jawset
The paint built up around the edges of the putty and left these unattractive ridges along the gumline, which no amount of touching up with a paintbrush is going to fix! The message boards warned of this.
Paint ridges on an airbrushed canine jawset

 Below, various airbrushing attempts, in various states of completion.A big fat pile of frustration.
Airbrushed canine resin jawsets
Some of these are solid pink plastic, with the teeth airbrushed white; some of these are white plastic with the gums airbrushed pink. Ultimately, though, I was not happy with the durability of the airbrushed paint- even with the primer, and even sealed with a topcoat afterwards, it was too easy to scratch and damage. Maybe there is a method I hadn't discovered yet to make the paint more durable, but for the moment anyway I am SO DONE  airbrushing these things for sure. On to plan B, attempting to cast in two colors of plastic!

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More Eyeballs

6/21/2018

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fursuit resin eyes pupil



​Adding to the thoughts I had on painting eyeballs I previously blogged about here. ​​​One of the areas I saw the most room for improvement was in painting pupils. I had come up with a method of making stencils for the pupils that I really liked, but I was not happy with the brushmarks in the pupils.


fursuit resin eyes pupil


  Solution- make the stencils as previously, mask out the rest of the eye as well, and SPRAY the pupil on with spray paint. 
fursuit resin eyes pupil




​Another interesting and challenging thing about painting eyes is that painted parts look completely different when viewed from the front or the back, as the curve of the plastic greatly magnifies anything in the center. Here, these two pupils are painted the same size, but you can see how much bigger the pupil looks when viewed from the front. 





I find it helpful when designing eyes to make a mock up like this on paper, and then put the resin eye over it to see how the curve will change it.  



Easy peasy!









fursuit resin eyes pupil
painting fursuit resin eyes


​Again you can see how much bigger the pupil looks, Also, you can see how anything painted around the outer edge  is greatly minimized. The blue in the mock up fills the outer half of the circle, but when the eye is placed over it, only a thin rim of blue is visible.
painting fursuit resin eyes
painting fursuit resin eyes


Starting to paint the actual eyes. Here they are both viewed from the back...
painting fursuit resin eyes

 And then one flipped over to show how different it looks when viewed from the front. 
wolf eyes resin fursuit

And, finished eyeballs, along with the reference picture I used. I did two sets like this, one for the grey wolf and another for the grey and black wolf I blogged about here.
​
wolf fursuit resin eyes

​

Another set of finished eyeballs, along with the reference picture I used. This will be for the brown and black guy I blogged about here.

​
Now, I just need to get some teeth painted, so I can start building some heads!
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Fur!!

6/19/2018

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​Planning colors is one of my favorite things to do. I get inspiration from colors of real animals, and ideas from going through my library of fur samples (I love adding to my library of fur samples!) I'm a happy camper when I find both a color idea I want to do and fur colors to do it with. This time around, I found not one, or two, but three ideas I want to do.
​
Snarling grey wolf



​Idea number one. This is a photo I've had in my studio for years. Good old classic grey wolf. This is what I had in my head when I first started brainstorming new colors.
grey wolf



​And a photo of a similar colored fellow from the side, for reference for tail and handpaw colors.
grey and tan faux fur samples for wolf fusuit
grey and tan faux fur samples for wolf fursuit

Above, fur samples from I'm StuffedFur. The grey one is the poetically named  #2013. The long mixed buffy one is "Russian Bear", and the short one is "Super Seal Ivory". I'm imagining using  "Russian Bear" for the longer buffy fur on the neck and tail, and the SS Ivory for the shorter buffy fur for the handpaws and maybe the muzzle and jaw.
​
black and grey wolf
snarling grey and black wolf

Idea number two! I can use the mixed grey fur I want to use for the grey wolf to do this black and grey fellow as well. "Black Bear" from I'mStuffedFur should work nicely for the solid black parts. 

Black and brown wolf


Idea number three. Now that I've found a long black fur I like, I want to do something like this black and brown guy too. You can see how these things start to snowball and get out of hand! 
silly brown and black wolf
black and brown mixed faux fur samples for wolf fursuit
 

Reference picture for tail and handpaws for the brown and black guy. Best reference picture ever.












And, #2001 a mixed brown and black long fur from I"mStuffedFur, sadly discontinued. It is much browner than it looks in this photo. The black one is "Black Bear".

faux fur for fursuit wolf
And, the first shipment of fur! Modelled by my daughter and her two friends. You look mahvelous dahlink!
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    I make masks. Because art is more fun when you put it on your head.

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