Puffy paint to texturize Jenova body?

[LonelyTower]

Hi, I've been stalking these forums for a while but didn't make an account till now. I have a question about puffy paint. I've been working on a costume of Jenova from Final Fantasy VII, the test tube version, and cracking my brains over how to texturize the body. As you can see from the picture, Jenova's body is kind of corrugated with veins (?) and ridges popping out. I'm using a lycra suit for the base and thought that Tulip puffy paint might work for bringing out the marks. But from what I've read, puffy paint works best on thin and low-lying lines like Spidey's web. What I have here is rather thick, highly raised lines with large lumps in many places. Will puffy paint still work for something like that? Especially for the bust area, where the lycra will stretch a LOT. I'm worried the paint will simply fall right off. And puffy paint is too expensive for experimentation...

 

[Pinkratgirl]

I think you should stay away from the puffy paint for the veins and ridges, especially since you said it's going stretch a lot in the bust area. If you stretch it out, pin it onto a board, and then put the puffy paint on, it could possibly help a little bit in the bust area but since you're doing such thick lines it might cause the lycra to look weird around the edges of the puffy paint everywhere else. I suggest you try and find an alternate way to create the textures you want where you don't have to use puffy paint. Anyways, this is a very interesting looking character and I can't wait to hear about the finished costume!

 

[MisterScrub]

How about surgical tubing? You could run the main 'veins' and then flesh them out with liquid latex. It might be able to withstand some stretching and return to shape.

 

[Khaylain]

What MisterScrub said seems a good possibility, or you can possibly put the suit onto a body form of the person who'll be wearing it and gluing some foam-pieces you've given a half-circle profile with the flat surface towards the suit. That would tend to keep it's shape a bit even without anyone in the suit. The kind of foam I'm talking about is often called anti-fatigue floor mats, or perhaps you could use a foam sleeping pad. The only important thing would be that it's closed-cell (meaning you can't compress it too much)

Looking forwards to seeing the results either way.