|
Friday, October 10th, 2008 |
| Subject: | Fursuit blather. |
| Time: | 10:41 pm. |
| Mood: |  thoughtful. |
|
Whee, redoing Beef Jerky, the inside of his mouth looks nice now. I took out all the felt that disintigated over the years (felt does that-- don't use felt on fursuits!) and he now has shiny smooth polyester-type fabric in there that makes his mouth innards not look fuzzy like felt did.
He's got a new set of teeth that are extra cute. and I took off his old nose and patched new fur in the place where the nose was, he looks extra silly without a nose. I've been meaning to make a lighter nose for him since his other nose is solid Sculpy and probably half the weight of the entire head. I sculpted two noses out of Sculpy Ultralight, but both of them I don't really like, so I think I'm going to try to use the last remaining Daiso paper-clay on a new nose for him. If not my second Sculpy Ultralight nose will have to do, even though it ended up flattening out a little more than expected when I baked it. :( :(
I tried to make a sewn footpaw pattern, but decided I hate sewing toes. The pattern seems good, but sewing toes really just sucks. I think a sewn pattern would only work out if I made my toes oversized-huge, but I was kind of going for a conservatively-sized toepattern so I could use it for other characters, guess I'll just have to try out a larger toe-pattern I suppose. Either way I really need to redo Beef Jerky's feet, and I need to design it in a way where I can strip the fur off it to wash, since white footpaws made of out longpile fur kind of suck to wash when they're attached to foam, and spot cleaning only goes so far.
I redid Cathlamet some, based on the critique I requested a week ago on a LJ community. I gave her cute eyelashes to try to make her a little girlier.. I just bought some fake eyelashes from the store and carefully attached them with a better glue than what they came with. I built up her cheeks under her eyes, and shaved up her smile a bit more. I thinned out her jaw and shortened it by about 1/2 an inch to make it appear open into a smile more. I also sewed the center of her snout together about 1/2 an inch as well, so her cheeks on her muzzle don't flare out as much as they did. I also painted the fur a bit darker on the underside of her mouth where I shaved the cheeks up to make it more obviously a smile, but not too obvously a line, its just shaded a little darker than the original furcolor. I still need to repaint her eyeshine to be a bit bigger, I think that'll make her "cuter" ... even though I meant for her to look relaxed there was just not enough expression in the photos I'd seen of her, and I think fursuit heads really need some sort of designated expression to at least look good in photos. I also did some more minor trimming on other parts of her face as well to even things up.
I have plans to redo Mangle's toe-paws more like I did Cathlamet's. Since Mangle was my first try at Digitigrade, I think I did alright, but not as well as I pulled off Cathlamet's, so if I update his toes I believe he'll look just as good. I'm going to keep his existing toes, but build them up more around his ankles so there's also no more "use-your-own-ankles" happening any time he poses.
At this point I'm trying to decide if I want to redo the fur on the inside of Beef Jerky's ears, I guess the longer fur along the outside edges is kinda cute, but I have better fur I could replace it with... I may just not touch it. I dunno. I think I'll think about it though.
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (4) or Piss.
|
Sunday, October 5th, 2008 |
|
|
I requested a critique on my Cathlamet mask in the post in this community:
http://community.livejournal.com/honestfurcrits/35349.html
Some of you may not be a part of that community or involved in fursuit-making much, but I really would appreciate your thoughts. It'll help me! :D You're welcome to comment here or there if you have any ideas for me. Thank you!
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (2) or Piss.
|
Saturday, October 4th, 2008 |
Friday, October 3rd, 2008 |
| Time: | 4:09 pm. |
| Mood: |  busy. |
|
My convention review of the convention itself:
http://www.rainfurrest.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=427
I really had a good time at Rainfurrest. It was fun, I got to meet a lot of people that I hadn't met before, and got to see others that I was glad to be able to see again!
I wished I had more time to hang out with some others I only got to see briefly. I was busy the whole time doing lots of things, fursuiting, preparing for our Masquerade skit, hanging out with friends.
I went to breakfast with Mav and Mike, and had dinner with Sphinx, Taren, Char, Raven, Mike, and Jondi. Had Raven's really good stew for dinner the 2nd night with Mav, Maly, Mike, Jondi, Ome, Karu, Damian, Katja, and Raven of course. That's the reason Mike now bought a slow cooker! Haha.
I got $20 for beating up someone with my stuffed Ham as Beef Jerky.
I saw some really incredibly awesome fursuits, plus a few I can't un-see.
I got some really cuuuuute fanart from Dingoroo. And a completely awesome badge for Cathlamet from Cricket.
I managed to somehow not do any art commissions despite a lot of people asking, and at the same time somehow managed to not buy any art at all the whole time (what's wrong with me!)
Cricket wore Beef Jerky for me on Friday & Saturday! She made an AWESOME Beef Jerky, and we fooled a lot of people together. It was really good times.
Got to meet up briefly with Soki, Beetlecat, Caside, KaHaTeNi, Savannah Horrocks, Lace and many other people. I WISH I COULD HANG OUT MORE. I started to get kind of people-shy when I was with my friends and other people were already with theirs. Where I'd see someone I knew and wanted to talk but they'd be with people already and I felt weird leaving my people to disrupt folks already with their people. God I am a dork. :(
Mike went mountain biking on the Saturday of the convention, he went to a cool place near the end of the runways that's a demolished neighborhood. The pictures he brought back were very cool.
So many people were asking Maly and I for advice on their costumes. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to set up something like, "North Sound's Costuming Workshop" at some rented meeting room someplace, get admission to pay for the meeting room and then help people fix up and work on their costumes. I wouldn't want to do this at a convention because people are already busy, but maybe as an event to plan for, that may be cool. I still have that box of scraps I brought to Rainfurrest that would work great. I wouldn't want it to be a class, but maybe some one-on-one time with folks to get some repairs done, and help people start their heads or something... pretty much what I do at home already. Just a thought.
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (5) or Piss.
|
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 |
|
|
The video I edited of the Rainfurrest 2008 fursuit parade!
hooray <3
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (2) or Piss.
|
|
|
Another video of our picnic at the Rainfurrest Masquerade:
:D
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (1) or Piss.
|
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 |
| Time: | 10:02 pm. |
| Mood: |  frustrated. |
|
I have a video of the Rainfurrest fursuit parade, best quality compared to the ones already posted.
I need some music, though. I'd prefer an insturmental selection and it needs to be 5 minutes long. Something upbeat, and the con's theme this year was "flight" if that helps. Music is the only thing holding me up from posting the video (as usual.)
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (6) or Piss.
|
Sunday, September 28th, 2008 |
| Time: | 7:59 pm. |
| Mood: |  happy. |
|
I just got back from Rainfurrest, check out our cute skit!
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (10) or Piss.
|
Thursday, September 25th, 2008 |
| Time: | 11:20 pm. |
| Mood: | happy. |
|
Time to go to sleep. Furries tomorrow. Rainfurrest is going to be so much fun. I simply cannot wait!
If you see me there, don't forget to stop and introduce yourself to me. I love meeting people. :3
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (3) or Piss.
|
Sunday, September 21st, 2008 |
|
|
Much preparings...
Mangle got more neck
Beef Jerky got more whiskers and repainted teeth
Cathlamet got more whiskers
Come to think of it Mangle got more whiskers, too
All three got fans with new batteries. Except Mala's sitting next to me with Mangle's head on usin' up the fan admiring himself in the glass window. He's twisting his head around and just now noticed me giggling at him and said "Whaaaat?" and bashed me with its nose.
Made some balaclavas to wear under the masks. They're white and stretchy. They'll work great to keep hair out of our face.
Got some badges picked out to wear.
My list of things to do is getting smaller! There's just under a week left to go!
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (2) or Piss.
|
Friday, September 19th, 2008 |
| Subject: | Rainfurrest!! TELL ME IF YOU ARE GOING. |
| Time: | 10:13 pm. |
| Mood: |  bouncy. |
|
I haven't rambled on yet about how I am excited to go to Rainfurrest, have I?
Well, I'm going! I've got the time off (Friday-Sunday), a room on the fursuit floor reserved, I'll be bringing Beef Jerky, Mangle, and this awesome new fursuit I just finished a few days ago:
Her name is Cathlamet
(more photos here)
For those who do not know, I look like this when I am not pretending to be a dog-person:
I'm just really really excited. Who else is going that I'll hopefully see there? :D
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (19) or Piss.
|
Thursday, September 18th, 2008 |
| Time: | 8:50 pm. |
| Mood: | silly. |
|
 |
• Take a picture of yourself right now.
• Don't change your clothes. Don't fix your hair.
• Post that picture with no editing.
• Post these instructions with your picture.
|
That's Mala hiding like a weirdo in the background. So I made a FACE.
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (5) or Piss.
|
Monday, September 15th, 2008 |
| Subject: | Yayyyyyyy, Digitigrade! |
| Time: | 6:17 pm. |
| Mood: | happy. |
|
Guess who just finished a tutorial on how to do digitigrade-legged costumes!!
I've been working on this for a while and now I'm finally comfortable with my skills and discoveries enough to share them with the rest of you! Hopefully this answers a lot of questions you had about creating the Digitigrade Illusion with your costumes. It took a lot of trial and error, but I really think I've got it down. Of course this is just my techniques that I've figured out, if you have another way or have a different method, please share!
Hopefully the illustrations and numbered steps are helpful for the tutorial, I made one for each step and included a few pictures (no final photos yet, I'm waiting to unveil my costume in the next two weeks in time for Rainfurrest. :3) I may redo other tutorials on my site to break them up into numbered steps with illustrations like I did for this tutorial. Let me know your thoughts on that, since there's just some things that I simply forget to take pictures of.
This is still a pretty involved tutorial, and is fairly advanced compared to standard-legged costumes and regular footpaws. It features hints on how to make the illusion of digitigrade legs while still being able to stand with your feet flat on the floor. Also, due to the way the feet need to look to complete the illusion the toes and shoe-paws are pretty big. When I wear them it goes mid-way up my calf, but it really tricks your eye to think you are really standing on your toes. :3
Anyways, on to the tutorial!
http://www.matrices.net/digitigrade.asp
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (6) or Piss.
|
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 |
Sunday, September 7th, 2008 |
|
|
This past week has been pretty cool.
Early in the week I got an employee card to stay a couple nights employee rate at the Best Western Lakeway Inn in Bellingham, hung out with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) malytwotails and jondi_wolfsong, and had a really really great time. Mala and I went to the Radio and Electricity museum. Now I really really want a Theremin. We got a "private concert" from one of the volunteers at the museum who was really good at it. http://theremin.tomfarrell.org/buyTheremin.html
Though I already have a Cuica I need to learn to play. I think a Theremin may be an easier pick up and fiddle with, because we haven't yet figured out how to stroke the inner pole of my Cuica to make sounds like in the videos. We just can make the lower sounds. and I have to admit I am a bit frustrated.
I get to take care of Salty again later this week, he's the cute little cairn terrier I dogsit every once in a while. I love doggies. I still need one. :3
Anyways, I'm going to watch a dumb show on TV now.
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (1) or Piss.
|
Saturday, August 30th, 2008 |
Monday, August 25th, 2008 |
| Subject: | The dump is a possibly fun or possibly horrible place. |
| Time: | 4:23 pm. |
| Mood: | grubs. |
|
Wasting time before going to the dump!
I wonder if I'll find something awesome. One time I found a fairly big wooden crate that said "BEEF JERKY" I kept it for a while, then the words faded on it and returned it to the dump at a later date. :P
I closed the lid on one of the trash cans that all the grubs were in a few days ago, and I banged on it and couldn't hear any flies yet. I don't want to open it. There were a lot of grubs I trapped in there. :/
I hope I remember how to drive Mala's pickup. I remember how to drive my green car, which was manual, but Mala's truck is different enough for me to have forgotten which gear is which, and I've maybe driven it 5 times before. Time to practice on the street and hope I don't back over the neigbor kids, my own car, or the carport!
I don't have much recycling this time, so maybe it will be expensive, I hope not.
After dump I'm going to go stink up the grocery store with my dump-hands and pick out some vegtables for dinner. Mmm. dinner. I want it now :(
Edit: Now its 6:20, two hours from when my adventure to the dump started, and I still have a pickup truck full of garbage, I'm dumb and the dump closed at 5, I was like 10 minutes late. At least now I have groceries and I'm full of Swedish Fish.
I remembered how, but stalled it at the gas station. oops. :/ Nobody got run over.
I still haven't peeked at grubs.
I saw a kid drop a huge bottle of beer in line in front of me. He barely looked old enough to drink, he was definitely stoned out of his fucking mind because there was a good 5 second delay before his reaction to having dropped the bottle and getting glass and beer all over his legs. Smart boy that one. He had an excellent stoner laugh and pulled the cliche'd "cleanup on aisle one" quote as a I picked another line to buy my groceries.
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (1) or Piss.
|
Thursday, August 21st, 2008 |
| Time: | 2:58 am. |
| Mood: |  nerdy. |
|
Meeeeeat! The ham grunts, the steak and salmon squeak, and the bacon, well. Its bacon!
The salmon is for Klickitat. :3
The rest of the meat selection is Beef Jerky's. :3 :3 :3 :3 :3 :3
The ham is huuuuge. Its about 2 feet long. So its gigantic and awesome, trust me.
P.S. new LJ icon!
|
|
Mark your territory: Sniff (19) or Piss.
|
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 |
|
