Hell cat costume - kitty of doooooom!

Here we go, a little planning - basic (very!) rough ideas for the armour and body colouring. Armour's going to have real bone on it, mostly found pieces of vertebrae. Having a bit of fun with it, The larger pauldron and gauntlets will look like weathered metal and the rest will be leather. I'm going for a barbarian orc-like theme with bone and burns on.
The body colouring is really simple, might add some detail in after the fact with an airbrush or something. Not sure yet, but this is a good start.

Looking great fallimar!!!

Right! Painting.
So I've spent the last day or so casting all the necessary claws, filling in any flubs with epoxy putty and painting up all the claws and horns. I use citadel paints because I have them and they're easy to use - beige/bone base coat, brown wash, mix of bone/white drybrush and then highlight with more white. Finished with a coat of varnish for protection. The claws also have the side dents darkened a bit.
I wanted them to look a bit weathered, kind of like nasty old bone. The effect is pretty decent, I think.



I was also looking for something cool to use as whiskers, since nothing I've seen so far has looked right to me. I hit on using feather quills, they're perfect. Tapered, curved, just the right size and even the colour works. so happy!



This is the "skin" for the face - it looks so weird and creepy when it's not attached. Heh.

Sneaky Peek of the face right now, the lips are drying before I put on the gloss coat.

Grumpy kitty!

Better picture of the progress.
"If your selfies look like this..."

That's so amazing, really cool!

Ugh. I'm down to grunt work at the moment on this build and it's a lot of graft for very little visual reward! I've carved the foam for the feet, finished off the foamwork for the other hand, am planning the leg pattern and foamwork and have done all the claws except one that for some reason won't hold the paint. Going to cast a new one today and just cross fingers!

I've also updated a sketch since I've decided on the basic armour and body shapes:


These are the feet and hands so far:


and a pair of cute little white ears I made using the old pair of smaller upright kitty ears from before I added the horns!


Now: finishing off the face fur and figuring out if I want to airbrush or drybrush the facial detail. I'll probably airbrush it but I have to practice a bit first on some scrap fur to make sure the paint behaves.

Phew... so much foamwork and so much glue! Still, got my basic leg shapes done. I think they came out rather nice, still got to attach them to the leggings and get the tail baseplate on (just a piece of EVA foam to help with stability).

Horrible photos in my housemate's messy room, but you get the idea!

Another few days of seemingly insignificant and non-photogenic work. Bleh.

Leg foam is all glued up, claws are all on, tail needs a bit of tweaking (too long, drags on the floor) but after that I'm all ready for fur. Probably my least favourite part of building this kind of thing, but it certainly ends up looking good.

I also had a bit of an adventure with my claws. It's always one, isn't it?
This one claw decided to be different and the paint remained sticky no mater what I did to it. Sanded it back and tried again - no dice. Tested the paint, fine. I'm guessing the resin cured oddly and was leaching something, since it's still sticky even now. Nasty thing. So, as you do, I tried to cast another claw. The resin failed to cure properly - went all brittle and seeped liquid and wouldn't come out of the mould. Turns out I forgot to shake up the resin. I got as much out as I could only leaving in the very tip of the dead cast. I though I could get it out with another cast, so I mixed up another batch, properly shaken this time.

WELL THEN.
And this, children, is why we always follow the bloody instructions.


Turns out the first non-shaken cast had done something odd to the silicone causing it to very strongly adhere to the new cast, despite a good coating of release agent. I may have inadvertently stumbled on a way to glue resin to silicone, but I wasn't happy about it considering I was still down one claw!
Thankfully I still had the original clay claw, though slightly misshapen by the first mould. I cleaned it up, moulded it again and finally got my one.last. stupid. claw.

Now that's over, I got on with covering the ears. They're very fuzzy, but I wanted to take some of the weight out of the long fur so I lined the ear inners with some flesh coloured antron fleece and only used the white stuff as a border. Looks like the ear is full of hair but really it's just a line of the stuff. Works well!

Also, at this stage the kitty is terrified by photos. Love how much expression you get out of this thing!

I'm pretty sure that cat is saying "Great Scott!"

I really like how the shaping and placement of the foam legs gives you the effect of the high ankle cat leg (don't know the technical term) without stilts. At least I assume your feet are actually flat on the floor in that picture?

Will

Will Vale said:

I'm pretty sure that cat is saying "Great Scott!"

I really like how the shaping and placement of the foam legs gives you the effect of the high ankle cat leg (don't know the technical term) without stilts. At least I assume your feet are actually flat on the floor in that picture?

Will

Click to expand...

Yep! Much easier to do, more comfortable and it works even when you're walking. Digitigrade legs, they're called (walking on the digits). Foam is wonderful

Phew. Lots of fur work lately, and I'm remembering exactly how much I used to hate it

First up, finished the main fur on the head. Still needs tailoring on the back and a neck piece, but the face is now ready for airbrushing. and more whiskers. The back of the head is going to have black-to-white ombre braids covering it with a few vertebrae threaded on at differing heights so they don't clack together and break. Should look pretty badass whipping around in photos



And patterned out the fur for the hands. HOO EEEE. Not a fun job, and a complete ARSE of a pattern, as you can see:


Comes out looking like this once it's hand sewn and turned out, then carefully pulled over the hand forms. This is still unglued, and you only glue the very fingertips. Best to keep the rest loose for mobility.


The worst part is now I have to make another one! :wacko

Are you going to trim the fur a little? Or leaving it at this length?

kialna said:

Are you going to trim the fur a little? Or leaving it at this length?

Click to expand...

Oh, definitely! The hands are just raw fur. The head's already trimmed up and just needs painting, but once I've done all the other bits they'll all need trimming. The hands just look like amorphous fuzzy blobs right now

Legs legs legs legs legs

That's hard to type a few times in a row. LEGS LEGS LEGS

*ahem*

so yes, legs. Put on the padding, Covered one leg in bin bags and then had a friend help me duct tape it all over, mark the midpoints and major seam lines and then cut me out of it! Drew on the secondary seams after cutting it up, made darts and gores, finally cut and sewed up the whole darn kit and kaboodle - just finished and took photos and it's almost 1am!

Yikes, time flies when you're inhaling vast amounts of faux fur fuzz. *cough*

So - pants!


Don't mind the droopy butt and baggy upper part, there's nothing holding it up yet. Still needs wide elastic in the top and a baseplate for the tail, I'm thinking I might use some EVA covered in worbla as a butt plate now, might be able to get it to sit better.

Great job! I'm still struggling through sewing "real" clothes and making pleather belt pouches. Foam is something still on the horizon.

I had to chime in because I just went to Comikaze last weekend, and once again hit the reality of "costumes with no pockets". So I'm wondering, where do you store your wallet and keys, and with those clunky gloves how do you sign your name on the credit card receipt when you pay for that impulse buy in the dealers room?

johntrek said:

Great job! I'm still struggling through sewing "real" clothes and making pleather belt pouches. Foam is something still on the horizon.

I had to chime in because I just went to Comikaze last weekend, and once again hit the reality of "costumes with no pockets". So I'm wondering, where do you store your wallet and keys, and with those clunky gloves how do you sign your name on the credit card receipt when you pay for that impulse buy in the dealers room?

Click to expand...

Short answer? Flail impotently and gnash my teeth at my inability to use my own appendages.

Slightly more practical answer - try to integrate pouches or pockets! This particular suit won't be particularly practical, the hands are bulky and will have big silicone pads on them - combined with the claws hand usage is going to be limited to waving and wiggling fingers. Maybe holding a weapon if I'm really lucky!
So far I've had a shoulder bag with my stuff in and just hidden it in photos if I'm alone, or gotten a very patient friend to carry it around when I'm unable to use my fingers.

In the past I've sewn hidden pockets into jacket lining or if the costume is medieval/fantasy-esque then you can use belt pouches or drawstring bags to hold stuff. Then again, I'm not used to costumes with functional hands. Slight drawback of the stuff I like to make

So I trimmed the hands:


and airbrushed the face.
Fwoor. Not used to usinga n airbrush at all, I think it was my second ever time turning on the compressor and having a go. Horrible cheap airbrush too, so my first layer with the white was awful. Turns out I had a lot to adjust in terms of the consistency. Finicky, isn't it? Yikes. Still, managed to bend it to my will eventually and get this happening:



ONWARD!

WOW! That is Fantastic!

jsher1010 said:

WOW! That is Fantastic!

Click to expand...

Thanks! Kinda surprised myself at how well it worked considering my lack of experience with airbrushing ((and total lack of coordination)
Looks far better in person when it's moving too, really sells the creepy catbeast when you're stalking around wearing the big claws. Yes, I'm a total nerd and totally unapologetic