Friday, October 19, 2007

new photos!

Jason Chalker manlyart.com took videos and pictures last night! YAYYYYY thank you!!

CLICK THE PHOTO to see the whole picture!

yorick
walking
suprise
side 2
shadow
rough paw
mouth
reach
lower
lower2
vface3
face2
crouch
bent
v
bear shadow
back

argh

there is also VIDEOOOOOOOOOO click here to go to YouTube!

Sunday, October 14, 2007

wolf is DONE!

I broke my promise and worked on it some more...finished just in time for the Revolution Tattoo art opening. The cool thing is that my boyfriends family and two close friends got to see it the very first time it all came together, as they had come over to hang out.... so that was awesome. I got a great reaction from them, but the true test was to see what total strangers thought.

So i got my pal Sarah to escort me to Revolution. It's close enough to walk but, wolf suit alone in a city might not be very smart. Jason ( Manlyart) also came by to check things out!

I drove:
truck

Is there a problem , officer?
truck2


ok ok, i didnt actually drive. I had to ride in the passengers seat and could barley fit my fat wolf ass in it.
truck3

So we drove down, my arm hanging out the window. Crossing the street some guy passing in his car "HEY WOLF!" and there were alot of stares. It was great.

Outside the gallery.
gallery3

Getting photos of this is really frustrating. The flash just messes everything up and you can't see much. The fur relflects to much light and the teeth look ivory white and flat. It looks so much cooler in real life!
gallery


See, you can barely tell where my arm is in front and the tail just looks blobby. Daaaaaamn.
gallery2

The gallery was great, the people there dug the costume. When i first walked up, people reacted with the best thing a costumer can hear: "WOAH!!" Sweet relief, people dig it. I had just finished it hours before the event and was a little anxious to see if it all worked well.

I got poked in the breasts alot, people not realizing i have boobs behind the big foam chest, LOL. I thought it was funny. Alot of people asked about how it was made and wanted to touch it or get photos with it. A few people got really close to my face and stared at the mouth and eyes..haha! I had a good time and was so happy it was well recieved!

So i celebrated with some Guitar Hero. Isnt there a band called Guitar Wolf?

guitar wolf

Sorry, i really couldnt resist.


So this test run helped me figure out what needs to be fixed and how long i can last in it. Which is not long. It's deadly hot in that thing. I did cool down quickly when a breeze came by since my suit is made up of many pieces and the seams let in some air, but this will require some kind of cooling system. A neck cooler or a vest or something. Pretty hot! I'd also like to add some grey fur to parts, as several people have suggested. A stripe down the head,back, some on the back of the arms, chest and maybe legs. It will break up the shapes a little and not be so blotch solid black. So back to National Fiber Technology for me!
Besides that, sewing up some seams, loosening the head elastics and maybe a new tail. Over all im really happy with it and REALLY relieved it's more or less completed. I feel like i have my life back, haha!

I'm going to get Jason to take a few decent photos of the costume this week, so more soon!

Sunday, October 7, 2007

werewolf art!

People are awesome. I have been given some really sweet gifts lately...art of my werewolf costume!


First from Emmy! Clicky to see her other stunning artwork But here's what she made for me!
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Then one from the always loved Neogeen This girl does some awesome monster designs... But here's the quicky sketch she hit me with over on livejournal, best comment ever:
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And here's one from a blogger watcher, Max! Some sweet looking photoshop. What a nice suprise to find in my comments!
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Thank you! It's awesome people are watching and it really makes my day to receive such kind things :D HAPPY HALLOWEEN (almost)

-mel

National Fiber Technology fur is awesome.

It's actually VERY close to being completed. I did a bunch of boring stuff that isnt all that exciting for photos...like installing the velcro around the waist for the undersuit/over shirt to connect to each other and the velcro in the elbows that will attach the upper arms/paw section to the overshirt. Bo-ring!

I also received my National Fiber Technology hair! It's ridiculous. This stuff is so perfect. I dyed it black with some leather dye this weekend, a very messy smelly process. Buy LOTS of rubber gloves! I got the whole head completed and covered...i did about half of the hunch of the back until i ran out of dye. The longer hair will run along the middle of the back to about it's buttcrack and then some will be added to the back of the arms and maybe legs if i have enough left over. I may try out making some sections dark brown or even red. Anyway have pictures...the hair needs to be trimmed a little:
nft head

Again, the website that I found this hair is http://www.nftech.com/. Nice people, great service, wonderful products! I will be using them again for upcoming life size head sculpture projects ;)

Oh yeah..another mistake i made. The multiple coats of resin on the teeth got too thick and the jaw had trouble opening and closing smoothly as the teeth began to touch and rub too much. It's easily fixed with a dremel tool bu now i have to repaint the bottom canines. Just a heads up to other folks trying this out :)

Roadkill. Not much to see but this is the front of the body. Kind of a black blob, sorry. But i really like the shape of the chest and legs now that the foam has been fixed up. Not that you can tell here.

fur costume

A few finished pieces! Head, jaw, feet, arms and the ninja hood that goes underneath the face. The chin of the hood has velcro glued on...which matches to the velcro inside the wolf's jaw. This makes the jaw movement a little tighter and more realistic, i think.

parts


So what's left? Sewing together the dozens of pieces of fur to each other to hide seams when the costume flexes. Dying the rest of the long hair and gluing that on. Velcro to the bottom of the pant legs to match into the shoes. Making a tail ( i really want to boobytrap it for people that will pull on it..but id feel awful if a little kid grabbed it, so no dice... i like kids.) Picking up the white contact lens. Painting the left hands claws and sealing them, painting the fixed teeth.

Um, what else? Wow...nothing. That's IT! I'm on schedule to finish it this week like i had hoped thanks to NFT pulling through for me.

Oh more boring stuff only a few people will care about: I did pop a jaw hinge this weekend while showing it off to freinds after a few beers and that had to be fixed...it's good it happened at home instead of out somewhere. So i went ahead and strengthened a few other parts. Yawn..sorry, yeah it's boring. But hey if you are building a suit and using this as a tutorial keep that in mind...get things super strengthened before you go out. Nothing will give you costume blue balls faster than getting somewhere to have fun and finding you forgot a piece of the costume or something broke. Boo!