Moomba fursuit
Dennis' Lair

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Notes:

05Oct2003

It is finished!

The suit itself is done, but I now need to get the prosthetic. WIll be working with Stalking Cat down in San Diegoish on that.

Five months later, work continues! =^_^=

Today we went in and refitted the pad suit, and found a few stress points. With us was my wife, who also photographed some of the progress.

The fur is exceptionally coarse against the skin. I thank God for the pad suit.

Photos will be up sooner or later, I hope.

Today we built the "pad" suit. I originally noted that it was a unitard with pads attached at strategic locations. What the current design is now is that we took a Leg Avenue large skin-tone unitard, attached said foam padding to the unitard with safety pins, and placed another hand-made unitard that was still not form fitting over this assembly as to quilt it into place. Later the inner layer of the pad suit will have stirrups attached as to keep it from riding up the legs. The end product thus far was easy to wear, but requires help to get in and out of. For one thing, there is a zipper in the back of the pad suit - or rather, two zippers, one for each layer. While I am fairly flexible, somebody is necessary to help me to get this closed, and will be necessary when the product is worn. My wife, fortunately, has volunteered to help me with this.

The foam padding is simple foam rubber sheeting - in the case of the shoulders, it was three or four layers of the stuff pasted together with 3M Foam-Bond 72 spray adhesive.

To note, the inner unitard was rather tight in the torso, almost to the part of being too much so. That I'm a bit overweight probably doesn't help, but I will also note that the inner layer is 100% polyester. I decided tonight that I would be quite warm in the padsuit alone. Mental note, lots of water will be necessary when wearing this.

Ah, yes, water. Hydrate or die. The suit is also being designed with access so that I can take care of that side effect of drinking copious amounts of water. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

Regretfully, I brought no camera with me, so the process was not documented. That will probably be for next time.

The next step at this point is for Astrid to tighten the pad suit up, and then later on this month I'll be going in to have the outer layer designed.

Said outer layer will be interesting. Because the costume, despite the "mascot" design, will be form fitting, it will have to be sewn onto me for all intents and purposes. I'm expecting about a six hour affair, and will probably be spending the better part of a Friday night getting this built, not to mention cab fare.

The original design was more of a "Cats" style costume: basically, a unitard colored as appropriate, with other accessories (gloves, leg warmers, tie-on tail, etc.) to complete the costume. What we decided with when I worked with Astrid was that I'd be using instead more of a mascot design.

Outer suit: acrylic fur, 1" pile; enough to where you don't see that it's a fabric; designed with "access" to avoid having to disrobe completely when necessary.

The forepaws are to be designed with a vinyl pad, and are close to the actual size of the hand to allow for manual dexterity for things like photography; in addition, the wrists will have an escape slit in them so that I can remove my hand to get full dexterity as needed.

Inner suit: spandex unitard with padding installed at strategic locations; also serves to avoid chafing from the fur and presumably helps the body to stay reasonably cool.

Head: my own, using a prosthetic nose. Copious amounts of hair styling implements to take my already long hair and straighten it to get the desired "tricorn hair" look.

Gallery will come about as I get pictures.