Thursday, 17 July 2014

Furvus at home

I'm not going outside when the air temperature's above blood temperature, so here are a couple of indoor shots.

Horizontal coronet - check
Dew claws - check
Short pasterns - check
Tail - check
Sticky-out ears - check

Hooves Mk III

An alternative design. Following a reasonable success with the Mk II, this time, I tried to reduce the apparent length of the pasterns by burying my toes inside the hoof rather than placing them on top of it.

I cut out four hoof plates from some chipboard that I had lying around in the workshop. Each hoof would be around 150mm x 130mm wide (6” x 5”), so the rear of each hoof would stick rearwards beyond the balls of my feet to help me to balance.

Hoof templates
I then cut a shelving bracket and bent it to provide heel support. I figured that if I used split-toe wetsuit booties, the split could be incorporated in the cleave between the two toes of the goat hoof. I stuck the hoof plates on, added cardboard formers, and applied a thin layer of Bondo.

Cardboard and Bondo
This design didn’t work. I quickly discovered that my foot needs support on both sides, so it was back to the drawing board again. And I couldn’t get a meaningful gap between my toes, so I abandoned the split-toe idea. I did cut the uppers of the booties because it was otherwise almost impossible to force my feet around the bends into a comfortable position.


Improved foot support
Here’s the improved metalwork support, glued and screwed to the hoof plates.

Taking a weight-saving idea from Patassy’s hoof-making video, I formed the hoof shapes in wire screening and added several layers of papier maché. Good old Elmer’s Glue-All cut 50/50 with water makes the paste. This process is extremely messy. Glue goes everywhere, and clean-up is a major operation even if it does clean up with soap and water.

Papier maché
Once the papier maché had hardened, I added Bondo in several thin layers, sanding down between each layer and filling low spots. Using a selection of power tools, I formed a profiled hoof sole. I’d like to leave realistic hoofprints in the dirt.

Repeated thin layers of Bondo
Now painting. After an initial spraying in black with paint that, according to the can, ‘adheres to anything,’ I got the acrylics out and painted the hooves in several coats. The little balls are ping-pong balls, cut in half, covered with Bondo, filled with spackling, and painted to match. These would become dewclaws.

Painted and varnished
I sealed the surface with a couple of layers of Elmer’s, which would seal any cracks and provide a slightly glossy finish. Then a walk test before adding the fur.

Walk test
I stuffed fur into the cleave first and glued the front, then worked around both sides of the hoof and finally up the sole of the bootie to the heel.

The actual growth of the hoof begins at the coronet border region, the uppermost area of the external foot just at the hairline of the leg. The sole of the hoof should be parallel to the coronet, which is different from in a horse’s hoof. Thanks to this sketch from goatwisdom.com (and there’s an oxymoron if ever there was one), I won’t screw up the fur and spoil the overall effect.

Source: www.goatwisdom.com
I fired up the hot glue gun and stuck shaggy fur all around the coronet and up the back of my sole and around my heel to create the pastern and fetlock. Then I added dew claws. These are ping-pong balls cut in half, covered with Bondo and painted, and filled with lightweight spackling to give a larger surface for the glue without adding too much weight. I trimmed the fur at the fetlock joint to give a better surface for the glue.

On the subject of weight, I already noted that the Mk I hooves were too heavy to be practical. The Mk II hooves weighed 2013g and 2055g (around 4 ½ lb each), which is still rather on the heavy side. The Mk III hooves are a ‘mere’ 1570g (3 ½lb) each. This is a two-fold improvement: first they’re lighter, and secondly I have improved my quality control and both hooves weigh almost the same as each other.

Front view
Back view












Now furred and Velcroed, here are the (almost) finished hooves. All that remains is to do a full costume test and make any minor adjustments. But that'll involve cavorting about outside, and as it’s over 40°C/104°F at the moment, I'll do that some other time.


Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Tail to tell

Goat tail
I previously mentioned how so many fursuit tails seem to poke out at an odd angle. When a tail sticks out horizontally from a horse's rear, for example, that's just fine because the animal's spine is running horizontally and the tail is an extension. It gets a bit more complicated once the caudate character is a biped, because the spine runs almost vertical.

Humans have tails. The coccyx is the bottom part of the spine, beyond the connection to the pelvis. It usually curls up inside the spine and does nothing unless its owner sits down over-vigorously at the water-flume park and bangs it really hard, at which point it produces weeks and weeks of pain. Ask me how I know.

Anyway, the point of this discussion is to decide where the costume tail should be located.

Near the top of the buttock cleft, that's where. Lower than you think. On my faun costume, the tail is over eight inches (20cm) below my waistline, and is almost where a chair cushion ends up. If it drooped, the tail would actually fall between my butt cheeks, but goats generally have tails that curl upwards and outwards.

More by happy accident than design, the base of my tail ends up exactly where the grey fur meets the black, so that's conveniently realistic.

My first attempt at locating my tail resulted in its being located too low. I noted in a previous post that I'd put it just above my Fundamental Orifice, but this caused me to sit on the thing. I've now relocated my tail an inch or so higher, which makes a world of difference. Not only is sitting easy, but when the costume slips down, the tail is still in a sensible position.

On to the makings:

Template
First I cut three pieces of fur in accordance with this template. The crescents I cut in grey and the pointy oval in black. I stitched them together into a sort of triangular sock, turned it the right way around, and then stuffed it with small pieces of seat-cushion foam.

After stitching this whole thing to the rear of my costume, I discovered that it was very droopy. It was also very fat, which might be fine for a deer, but isn't right for a goat. Goats appear to have flattish tails, so I needed to do something about that too.
Just before attaching

To solve the droopiness,  added a further layer of fur on the top surface which would extend on to the main costume body. Once this was all attached, it tended to hold the top of the tail closer into the rest of the costume.

I also went through the stuffing numerous times with a needle and thread to flatten the tail itself. This had the effect of curling the thing upwards, which was exactly the result I wanted.

So there you have it. A goat-like tail in a realistic but practical position.



Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Hairy legs

I obtained some short-haired faux fur in black and grey, plus long-haired faux fur in black. I also got around one square metre (40 inches x 40 inches) of seat-cushion foam around 150mm (six inches) thick, a roll of cheap camping mat, and a scrap of cheapy-cheap cotton. I used the remains of an old bedsheet that I was tearing up for cleaning rags. Oh, and a pair of jogging bottoms.

  
Template

Newspaper template
This is what I want














I laid down on a large sheet of paper and had an assistant draw around my lower body. Then I sketched up where the padding would go to create the basic faun-leg shape. This produced two basic triangles which I cut out of foam. The larger one to lie in front of my thigh, and a smaller one behind my calf. I cut these on the generous side, because it’s a lot easier to trim foam that to add it. Then I did it again for the other leg.

Cloth template - profile
Cloth template - rear
Then I stitched together a basic pair of trousers out of the old bedsheet. I used a favourite pair of old jeans to get the sizes of the panels about right, I added allowance for the foam padding, and cut them on the generous side.

All the pictures of my kit laid out on the kitchen floor include a tape measure, and the tiles are 300mm (12 inches) square. This is what fits me, and I’m a large guy. Your mileage may vary.


Trial and Error

Cloth template plus hooves
Padding
Padding revisions
This procedure was time-consuming. I stuffed the padding inside the purple pants and progressively marked and stitched to take in the material until the fit was about right. I also worked on the foam, trimming the outer edges off to make them rounded, and cutting a V so that the foam would rest better against my legs. Cutting foam is easy with a breadknife or a pair of kitchen scissors.

I had to take in the purple pants from hips to waist, behind my knees, and in front of my shins. It didn’t matter if there were great flaps of material beyond the stitching, but I didn’t cut any material off until I was sure that I'd not gone too far and would have to unpick a seam. And I allowed plenty of material in the crotch area otherwise the trousers would rip open the first time I took a step, bent over, or sat down.

Remember the jogging bottoms? At first I thought I’d stuff the padding inside these which would make the furry legs easier to put on, so I took a photo and then drew up where the final faun legs should end up. Having already made and photographed my Mk II hooves, I Photoshopped one of these into the pic and made more adjustment to the padding.


Upper legs

Upper leg profile
Upper leg rear












These are fundamentally baggy knee-breeches. Taking the final size of my purple pants as a pattern, I cut the shaggy fur first into a pair of tubes. I chose to use grey short-hair fur on the inside leg, and made this up separately. In the pictures I turned the costume inside out so that it's easier to see what's going on. I cut the waistband very generously, because it would need to fold over to accommodate a drawstring, and would also need to stay reasonably high on my waist even when bending over or sitting. I also cut the front generously cut to allow for thigh padding. Behind the knee the costume kicks out to the rear. this is where the hocks would go. The bottom hem would drop over the lower leg padding and be held in place by Velco.

Thigh padding
Speaking of padding, here's one of the thighs. Top to the left. It actually goes from groin to just below the knee. The blue Karrimat is to reduce wear if the foam moves against the inside of the fur. It's held on with impact adhesive.



Lower legs

Essentially these are furry tubes, not unlike the leg-warmers featured in eighties dance videos. I used short-hair fur for these because a goat's leg typically doesn't have long hair below the hock, and I was aiming for realism.

Having two separate pieces for each leg also makes the costume easier to don. 

Empty leg tube
Leg tube and padding

Lower leg padding
The top of the tube is cut with a chamfer and the padding held in place with a piece of Velcro. To avoid the Nora Batty wrinkled stocking look, the lower leg fur has to be fairly tight, and I found that I had to slide my leg in with the padding displaced sideways, and rotate it into place once my foot was poking out of the bottom. The top of this piece ends up snug behind the knee.
In theory, the bottom of the upper leg drops over the hock and is held in place by a couple of pieces of Velcro. I've found that putting four press-studs on each leg helps security a lot. Velcro at the bottom attaches to the hoof fur.


Hints and tips
  • The jogging bottoms should be worn against the skin. This costume can get very hot and sweaty, and they're easier to launder than fur and foam. 
  • Self-adhesive Velcro doesn't stick very well to fur. Use large pieces, and sew them into the costume.
  • Large press-studs are more effective than Velcro, but may pop off without warning, and offer no scope for adjustment. I suggest a mixture of both.
  • When getting into the costume, I've found the best way is to do the lower legs first, then pull on the upper-leg breeches. Attach the hooves, and finally insert the thigh padding. It's too difficult to bend over to deal with the hooves when your thighs are a lot higher than what you're used to.
  • Being anatomically fastidious, I added a genital bulge or codpiece to my costume. This is optional, but might require a loincloth when appearing in polite company. Female fauns won't be wanting that bit of padding ;-)
  • I didn't mention the tail, but I'll cover that in a different post. 




Doctor Hooves

I'm aiming for this
The two main things I had learned from my previous attempt at building digitigrade stilts were than my hooves needed to be lower and more lightweight. I’d basically have to construct a pair of heel-less platform shoes. Unfortunately, for Muggins is a bit of a sasquatch, shoes with heels that can be cut off are not generally available in Euro Size 45. (I have no idea how I’d kit myself for some Rocky Horror.)

I’d have to build the shoes from scratch.
Basic framework
First I found an old pair of canvas gym shoes, some wood, and a steel U-section off some shelving, cunningly repurposed. I cut one piece of wood down to hoof size, as fitted to the toe of my shoe, and screwed and glued a 45° wedge to it. The steel would provide a rigid support to my heel.

Cardboard shell
Next, the hoof shell. This I made from cardboard, stapling it in place with a heavy-duty staple gun. Small nails would work, but stapling is a one-handed operation. I bent more cardboard to form the gap between the two pieces of a cloven hoof. I do realise that in reality the entire hoof is composed of two independent pieces, but I wanted rigidity. Anyway, everything except the front would eventually be buried in fur.

Expanding polyurethane foam
My cunning plan to keep the weight down was to fill the hoof with expanding polyurethane foam. This stuff comes in an aerosol can, is easy to apply, and expands alarmingly as it goes off. It’s important to wedge the two toes apart rather more vigorously than I did. I ended up with a gap that was really too small, but it was too late to do anything about that by this stage.

Trimmed to final surface
I cut off excess foam with a hacksaw blade. It cuts really easily, and a breadknife would probably do it, but I’d need a hacksaw later anyway. Leave the kitchen knives in the kitchen.

Covered with a thin layer of body filler
Now, a hard outer shell. Car body filler. It goes under several trade names, including Bondo and Plastic Padding. I found a local brand, but it’s all the same stuff. Mix with a little hardener, apply with a palette knife, and smooth it. Bondo is very sticky, and it also goes off in about four minutes, so only mix a small quantity at a time. I covered the walls and sole with Bondo and let it go off for an hour, by which time it was rock hard. Getting the filler in between the toes was very difficult; another good reason for making the gap rather bigger than I did. Some body fillers come with fibre reinforcement. I suspect that this would help, but as I could only buy plain old Vanilla, this is speculation.

Sanded and sculpted
A paddle-wheel sander makes short work of rough Bondo, and it’s fairly quick process to achieve a smooth outer surface. Again, between the toes is almost impossible to get at, but a sanding disc on a power tool gets there eventually. I also used a Surform plane, a hand tool that looks like a cheese grater. I was able to cut some shape into the sole of each hoof in the hope of leaving more realistic hoofprints in the dirt.

The sanding produces an incredible amount of dust, so do this in a well-ventilated space, and definitely wear a dust mask if you don't want to be sneezing Bondo powder for days afterwards.

And then it all went pear shaped.

A thin layer of Bondo is nowhere near strong enough to support my body mass, and cracks almost immediately appeared at the rear of each hoof. As I didn’t want to make them any larger, more drastic action would be required.
Some foam removed to be replaced with more Bondo
First I sawed the hoof soles off, making the hooves about 10mm lower, and dug out about half of the lightweight foam filler. I replaced it with more Bondo, especially at the rear which is where most of my weight would be concentrated most of the time.


Refilled. Now to sand down the soles again
Now with thicker soles, I had the opportunity to sculpt more hoof features into the soles.

After a walk test to check that these would now work without immediately falling to pieces, I glued and screwed the shoes to the wooden plates, and bolted the heels to the metal U-sections. Application of glue would stop the bolts from coming undone. Then I painted the hooves using acrylics, and finally a couple of coats of Elmer’s Glue-All as a sealant and varnish, before gluing the fur in place to cover up all the hardware.

They look OK I think, they leave great hoofprints, and they clop nicely on hard surfaces. These hooves are rather heavier than I originally planned, but the front-loaded weight does help me keep my balance.

Furred and finished
Walk test


Sunday, 13 July 2014

To ear is human..., well caprine actually

I have, I believe, finalised my ears. My previous post discussed why I want sticky-out Toggenburg ears, and this is what I aimed at.

A YouTube video suggested using Sculpey, which is a low-temperature oven-fired clay. Basically, model in clay, stuff it in the oven at 120°C for 20 minutes, and the finished product is hard but slightly flexible. As latex or other plastic doesn't seem to be available where I live, I thought I'd give the Sculpey a go.

Ears Mk I

First I made a pattern from newspaper, then an armature out of tinfoil in the same shape. The flat shape is basically a quarter-circle with the pointy end cut off. When it's rolled up, the conical ear shape is formed.

Mindful of the weight of the clay, I rolled a sheet as thin as I dared, and put one sheet of clay each side of the tinfoil. Then I made the other ear, and put them in the oven.

And here's the result. The Sculpey is 'Terracotta' flavour, which is pretty good even without painting, but some fur on the outside would still be required.

I stuck the ears on to a plastic headband under my wig, and then discovered a fundamental problem.

They're miles too big.

What looks in proportion on a Toggenburg goat is ludicrously wide when applied to a human head!
Ears Mk I are too long and too heavy


In addition to aesthetic considerations, these clay ears are way too heavy. They bounce around, swing almost independently of head movement, and eventually break the headband.

So I trimmed them down to a more sensible size, and got another headband.
Ears Mk II. Shorter is better










The trimmed-down ears were a great improvement. They were still a bit heavy, and the tinfoil was now visible along the trimmed edge, but I dealt with that with some fur on the outside rear surface.

Irritatingly, these Mk II ears still proved too heavy, and the headband broke. Again. I clearly needed to find a lighter solution.


This is what I came up with. The same cone shape as before, but cut out of black fur, and with grey short-hair fur inside, all stuck together with Elmer's Glue-All. Once the glue had gone off, they held their shape quite nicely. I inserted the folded end of a wire coathanger between the fur layers, and stitched the other end of this into the skullcap of the wig. Now the ears were posable, and permanently attached to the wig.
Ears My III. Lightweight


I stitched some black fur around the sides and back of the wig so that my actual human ears were completely covered, I ensured that the goat ears fell exactly over my earholes, and adjusted the angles so that they looked natural.

As a final piece of set-dressing, I added an ear-ring that I found in the needlework box.

Friday, 11 July 2014

Ears my first try

I'm forever irritated by pointy elf ears. It seems every non-human, intelligent entity on Earth that appears on TV  has to have pointy-tipped ears. Whilst this is just fine for elves and pixies, - or if you're Cornish, piskies - I fail to accept that every ethereal beast has to have pointy-tipped ears.

And so I'm gratified that the makers of the Chronicles of Narnia films decided to be more sensible in the auricular department.

Goats seem to have three main types of ear: there's the floppy English style, the aeroplane sticky-out style, the sunshade, and the LaMancha earless design.

Let us cast aside the former and the latter. Frankly, I like the Toggenburg ear design, and any faun I ever design is more than likely to sport something like these.

I consulted the internet, and discovered a website that extolled the virtues of Sculpey oven-dried clay. I made a pair of ears out of a double layer of Sculpey and fired these in my oven at 120°C and stuck them to a a headband. In truth, they're rather fine, but Sculpey is very heavy. Far too heavy, in fact, to be supported by a plastic headband.

I'm going to investigate the possibilities afforded by at Department of Headband and Fur.

Long-legged beastie

Picture from the internet. Coloured by me
A goat leg consists of four main bones. There's the thigh, between hip and knee, and the shin which is a single bone down from the knee. In humans there are two bones here (tibia and fibula), but in goats they're fused into one. At the distal end of the shin bone is the hock, which is equivalent to a human ankle and there's even the calcaneus which is the same as a heel bone.

From the hock to the fetlock (at least, that's what it's called in horses) is the cannon bone, and here is the hinge where the bones split into two that together make up the pastern that terminates at the hoof.

Enough about the biological terminology; how does all this affect a faun costume?

Well, it's all to do with getting the proportions to look right.

Over at Łazienki Park in Warsaw, there are at least two faun statues. They're both holding gas lamps in an echo of the Chronicles of Narnia. I have yet to find out who sculpted them or when, but one of the statues is pictured above. I couldn't resist colourising the image.
Hoof-length proportions
I took a long look at the proportions in the statue, and other statues of fauns and satyrs that I've encountered on my travels around the internet and in real life. The leg-bone proportions all seem to follow the basic pattern wherein the pastern is one hoof length and the cannon is two hoof lengths.

This is somewhat different from examples of normal Capra aegaerus hircus, whose hooves are a lot smaller in proportion to the leg length, but these don't habitually balance on their hind legs.

I did some more research, comparing what my own costume achieves with what I think could be achieved by modifying the hoof design, everybody's favourite faun Mr Tumnus, and a domestic goat that I photographed locally.

Domestic goat,      Mr Tumnus,      Modified costume,      Original costume
I superimposed a thin red line around the goat hind leg and copied it over on to Messrs Tumnus and Furvus. The green lines represent basic bone lengths, and the yellow lines show the differences in heights from the ground to the pastern joint, hock, knee, and the lowest human part of a faun.

As a proportion of hoof length:-

                        Pastern    Cannon    Shin
Domestic Goat           0.8        2.7       3.2
Mr Tumnus               0.7        2.0       2.2
Mr Furvus (modified)    0.7        1.6       2.0
Mr Furvus (as-built)    1.3        1.9       2.1
Łazienki Faun           1.0        2.0       2.0


I appear to have this shin and cannon about right, but, as I suspected from previous pictures, the pastern is really too long in my as-built costume. Shortening it would require building the hoof around my foot rather than forming it as a platform, but that creates difficulties in building a realistic cleavage.

Consider Hooves MkIII a work-in-progress, with Mk II being workable for now.






Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Almost-final costume

Dancing faun
This is what I'm working towards. It's not quite compete, and I keep discovering where I need more fastenings, but check out the shape of the right leg. I think I may have the basic leg shape about right.

Details of how I made the costume legs, hooves, and ears will follow. But for now, here's a workable piece of cosplay kit.










Musical faun
Furvus' front view. The music is for real, and I'm rather better on a recorder than on the traditional panpipes.

The loincloth is to make Furvus more PG than R. Do we really consider it necessary?
Rear view














Here's a pic of Furvus from behind. Consider the tail, which is quite goat-like in that it's flattish in section and curled up and outwards. But what of its location?

I've been agonising about where a faun's tail would grow from, bearing in mind it replaces the coccyx in humans but curls outwards rather than inwards. There's a lot of 'sticking the tail horizontally outwards from the waist' that I've seen on the internet, which I really wanted to avoid. As fauns are biped, I located the tail in its anatomically-correct location, just above the Fundamental Orifice.




An undesirable side-effect is that the tail gets in the way whenever I try to sit down. Not to worry, I guess I'll have to be careful, or prefer soft sofas or bar stools.

Surprise visitor

And here is Furvus greeting his first visitor. Next-door's housemaid came to find out where the music in the garden was coming from. I hope she'd not come to complain about the noise. She came round the corner and was startled. My guess is that she's never met a faun before.