First finished commission for Muddle Designs! First order: Mouse tail with a bit of grey fur.


I'm actually quite pleased with the tail.  Though I will admit, it frustrated me to no end.  Mostly because of my sewing machine.  I don't know if it's the machine itself, the needle, or the thread I'm using.  I bought the machine at one of those second hand stores; I was looking for pants and they had the machine for cheep.  I thought why not, keeps me from having to take a trip to another store with my arms full. 

It had a new needle, and about five minutes into sewing the fur onto the fleece the needle shattered.  I didn't have any pins, so that wasn't the problem.  I now look like an idiot when I sew with the machine; I wear my Dr. Horrible goggles to keep the metal from flying in my eyes if it ever breaks again.  Also, the thread from the needle would keep breaking, and it ate through bobbin thread so fast!  I think it's the thread I'm using, and yes, I do know how to use a sewing machine.  I adjusted the tension all over the place and did tons of test strips.  

Much fun, because a few days ago my glue gun broke...

But besides that, it went well.  The fleece sewed together nicely, as did the fur.  But fur and fleece didn't want to get together very well. 

Over all, I'm pleased with the tail!  The fur is absolutely beautiful!  It's soft, long, and brushes out of seams very nicely.  The ribbing in the tail was something different for me.  My own tail is flat, but these turned out quite pleasantly. 

Any thoughts?

Tags: finished suits, tails
Current Mood: pleased

To update everyone on Cathlamet and former Mangle:

I haven't made a decision on the buyers juuust yet. I have been getting lots of good offers from some really awesome people, and I'm waiting back on replies, and still making replies to other folks before I narrow things down.

On a secondary note, for those that e-mailed me asking what prices I've been offered so far: I'm not quite ready to release some of the amounts of the offers I've had yet. Mainly because I'm still fielding them, and I'm primarily looking for a good home for the costumes first. Certainly I don't want to undersell myself, but I also don't want to put anyone off from putting in an offer because someone else happened to offer a very high amount.

I believe I replied to each person who sent an email so far. If I missed you, please let me know! Or drop me your e-mail address here and I will email you or reply back if I missed you!

I'm going to try to make a decision soon, so then I can feel out how much shipping could be for the buyers, and get specific photos of what people requested, provide inseam measurements, and any other important details.

There's still time to email me if you are interested and haven't yet!
sara at matrices.net


note: the fursuit sandals aren't included.

And if you're not sure what will be included with the sale, here is the link to the prior post: http://community.livejournal.com/fursuitauctions/1059930.html

Someone with a rabbit obsession was arrested again. They found an empty bag of carrots:

http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/strange/offbeat_ap_oregon_woman_obsessed_with_rabbits_arrested_again_20090618851_2544048

Todays post is for Streak the Tiger.



This was a very challenging suit to build for a couple reasons. First, this is fur from Distinctive fabrics. I will say it is a well made fur, but I'm not a fan of it. It's very soft tho it has a potential to mat when abused and holy crap does it ever get into everything when I'm working on it. I was sneezing orange for a week after this project! ^.^ The second challenge was that for some reason I agreed to sew all these markings in rather then airbrushing. It took soooooo much time and fiddling to sew them all in. Whole days were spent stitching him together. But he did turn out very cute in the end!



I do like him a lot! The suit is flexible, uber soft, and turned out with lots of personality. He was very charming once he was all together and out of my nasal passages! ^.^ He is eminently huggable! As always there are more pictures of Streak in his Gallery on the One Fur All Studios website.



Pics of the next suits will be posted after their debut at Midwest Fur Fest. Until then, thank you for reading and have a very good day!

Tags: fursuits, mff, tiger
Current Location: Studio
Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Hadouk Trio - Gopi

How awesome does this sound?  The best part is that at the end of the race YOU GET TO KEEP THE CAR.  And your co-driver gets one too..  And I bet some of the other teams would give you theirs.  

It starts today, so it's too late to sign up.. This time.  I might need to spend the next year finding a very skinny co-driver.  Who wants to bump-draft across Poland and Germany with me in a 26hp shoe box?

http://www.gt-classico.com/

This essay contains plot spoilers about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 & 2. Reader discretion is advised.

---
Last night I finished the single-player campaign of Modern Warfare 2, one of the most hotly anticipated and best reviewed games of 2009. Its 18 single player missions were short but action-packed - it felt a little easier than its predecessor Cod4:MW.

Awash in testosterone, the gripping plotline of MW2 is ludicrous in retrospect, like playing a Michael Bay movie. References to movies such as Red Dawn, The Rock, Hunt for Red October and others are stitched together into a ridiculously over-the-top story about a brutal terrorist attack in a newly nationalistic Russia being blamed on Americans, which triggers a Russian invasion of Virginia and Washington DC. The Russians are somehow in cahoots with a corrupt US General who double crosses you, and, with only sketchy reasons given, the final showdown is fought in an Afghan sandstorm against Shepherd's hand picked team of American forces. In the original game, the main villain who supplied nuclear weapons to Saddam Hussein standin General Al-Asad, was Imran Zakhaev, Russian ultranationalist loosely based on the real-life Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In MW2, Zakhaev's right hand man Makarov has apparently taken over Russia but still manages to find the time to stage and participate directly in terrorist attacks on his own people in order to foment a war with the West. The mission 'No Russian' was the most violent and unpleasant thing I've ever seen in a video game, one that implicates the player in acts of total brutality and critiques the genre of FPS games by itself, while indirectly referencing 9/11 with its civilian airline setting. It has been compared to GTA, but the GTA games are cartoony satires, while this was as real as it gets. It was brutal and scary.

The plot moved incredibly quickly, and elided past many of the questions one might have - such as, is the rest of the US under invasion, or just DC and suburban Virginia? What about the NATO allies, or the UN? Or what happened to the President? Would the rest of the world truly believe that Americans supported openly by the US government would just walk into a foreign airport and gun down innocent civilians at random? I had trouble buying the premise of the invasion, but it was so awesome while it was happening that I didn't mind. The portentous Hans Zimmer score and the voice talent from the likes of Keith David and Lance Henriksen just made it work, and the heartbreaking scenes of a war-torn Washington DC were intense. Another standout mission was the Boneyard, towards the end, just total chaos and bullets flying from every angle - it was the flipside of the airport scene, involving wrecked airplanes (another 9/11 reference) and now, instead of shooting civilians, you're shooting your own countrymen in the back. I found the Boneyard mission almost as brutal and scary as No Russian.

Then came the endgame. I would have preferred a little bit of reasoning behind General Shepherd's actions. Based on his closing speech he seemed to be saying he was trying to prolong/deepen the war or encourage Makarov in some way in order to increase his own power. It was unclear what happened to the US President, beyond seeing a blown out bunker (that was implied to have been destroyed from the inside). Was General Shepherd marshaling a military coup of the United States? It wasn't totally clear but that's what I gathered. The writing could have made that a little more understood. Also, at the end of the game, Price and Soap are fugitives and just killing Shepherd doesn't necessarily end World War 3, setting us up for the inevitable next game in the series (which I eagerly await). Perhaps Shepherd or his successor will be an American military dictator.

When we look back at this decade, post-9/11 and the Global War on Terror, and now into the Obama era of "AfPak" and the resurgent Taliban, there's only a few cultural artifacts that truly capture the complex zeitgeist of the era of war. Battlestar Galactica, from its opening nuclear attack right down to its unsatisfying ending, is one. The Modern Warfare series, along with Rainbow Six and other military FPS games is another. Why do I say that? Game developers need to sell games worldwide. To do this they have to be somewhat apolitical, at least on the surface - something too overtly Rah-Rah Americuh won't sell well in Europe, etc. Or even here. These games are not ultra-nationalist - every time you're killed in MW1 or 2, you get a quote from Gandhi or Donald Rumsfeld or the cost of an Abrams tank or B2 bomber. Infinity Ward is aware of the moral complexities of making a game based on current events and modern warfare.

This moral complexity is subservient to the main goal of video gme writing. The goal of the game scriptwriter is to build a loose story structure upon which can hang a string of action sequences. To do this they need an enemy that can be killed in large waves with impunity. You can't feel bad about shooting Space Invaders. Tangos are the obvious choice, that won't offend anybody too much - who can sympathize with terrorists? But you can't make them anyone's idea of a freedom fighter. Their nationalities are usually obscured or they represent an evil 'faction' of a larger nation (like ultranationalist Russians), and the one pulling the strings has little motivation beyond simple greed or lust for power. The video game version of the Global War on Terror as fought by millions of gamers is the fantasy version of the war, the one we wanted. The one against an unambiguously evil foe. It's the one where the neocons were right, where Saddam DID have WMDs and the invasion of Iraq saved the world from a mad dictator. The one where we kicked ass acting out all the best war movies and action films for real, in response to the straight-outta-Bruckheimer 9/11. But even in the fantasy gameworld, reality keeps creeping in. The war on terror is not simply good vs evil, no war ever is. Our greatest enemy lies, as always, not in foreign sands but in ourselves.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

So I have this suit that is almost ready for his big fullsuited debut. I wore him as a partial to Furloween in '08, and now am about to have a bodysuit that the awesome Shengoh made for me. The thing is, there's one thing that I'd like to still add to the suit's head that I'm a little curious about. Adding a mane.

Here's the suit head I'm talking about. His name is Ezhno Anktisani, and he's a mesohippus:


His character has a long black mane, and I'd like to add that in, but I'm not sure of the best way to go about it. See, I've seen people use wig hair, and I've seen it look great on some suits, but I've also seen it appear very flat when they do that and that's not really what I want ^^;;

So I was thinking of carving a bit of a shape out of foam and using long pile black fur? But that seems like it would only work for a short sort of mohawk-ish thing. Which I could settle for, I think, but what's the best way to carve the shape? just a straight line back, or should I add in some width to take up a little more space between his ears?

And I was also thinking maybe yarn, which I could cut to whatever length I want and maybe attach to a strip of foam so it it gives the mane more body. And maybe I could brush out the twining of the yarn, but then it would get poofy...

So, tl;dr, what's the best way to create a mane on my fursuit head?

hello, I'm a newbe :D
i have a question, yesterday I saw this video on youtube:

www.youtube.com/watch

many of those galaxies I've never
seen before.. are they all real?
and can someone please tell me their names?
plz help!

I'm almost done with my fursuit head in time for the Renaissance Festival. I'm going to be Disney's Robin Hood along with my original character FireRocket. I'm wondering if anyone can help red line the eyes from this picture for a calm expression.

Current Location: Summit, MS
Current Mood: artistic