Tail & Hand Progress

 A nice picture of my attempt at a neat pile of foam. Not so good. Since this though, I assure you I have used up quite a bit of it (although we still have plenty left!). I have not taken pictures of the torso, I have worked on it however I'm not sure where I'm taking it from here. 

 The first tail, which was trashed, heads up. We took the pool noodle, wrapped the foam around it, glued it with Super 77 then used duct tape to hold it down however this idea was trashed due to the lack of swing to it, and overall it didn't hold well.

 It looks pretty rubbish, so we pulled all the foam off of it and put the pool noodle aside to just use the upholstery foam.

 Here's where the tail began. Two blocks of three inch foam, two blocks of two inch foam. Staggered together, mind you.

 Lotsa foam.

 We did the same staggering method throughout the entire tail, just doing it like bricks. The last little end of the tail is just a scrap of two inch (maybe three?) I had around, and it worked perfectly! Wiggles just like I want it to.

 Brick laying.

 It got a bit more difficult and complex as we went on but I figured it out, luckily. While working on this entire thing I've watched three out of four seasons of Kim Possible. So I say definitely take advantage if you can do this in front of a TV or have a laptop.

 The not-so fun part. We used math to make the tail as symmetric as possible.

 We used a ruler to put a straight line to make it easier for us.

 Then we did some math, figuring out how wide it needed to be at certain points and drew the lines for me to work from.

 Pretty good way along. Also keep in mind, we intended for one side to be the top but a different one ended up being the top with a few minor fixes.

 More progress. By this point I have about 40/58 hours in. Yes, this tail took about 58 hours in all to get where it is at the end. That's how I have watched so much TV while working on this darn thing.

 I also recommend a buddy to keep you sane while working on such a huge project like this.

 I did my best to make it smooth however I'm not stressing, as we're thinking about doing a "scale effect" to it (more on that when it comes time) and if we don't do that, I don't think it will really show through the fabric. We ran into a few things regarding how to attach the tail to the body however I think we figured it out. When we get to more specific stuff like that, I will be writing up actual tutorials for such a project.

 I got some pretty terrible blisters on my hands from the scissors, despite being spring-handled and extra cushy. So one day I used a glove and it still didn't help all that much. So, I wore the other glove on top of it and it was perfect.

 The tail all smoothed out, however not quite done.

 I've been keeping up the foam scraps to contain the mess, my mum thinks we might use them to stuff a dog bed or something, haha. Surely we can reuse them for something.

 Going right through the foam still.

 One thing we tried was to glue (E6000) to the waist elastic. However, it held for about ten minutes before it completely fell off so I don't recommend gluing the tail to anything to hold it up. We'll be relying on sewing, hopefully if it all goes to plan.

 The more finished tail! The end part I think looks all right but I may fix it up. You can see on Monoyasha's raptor ( http://monoyasha.deviantart.com/art/Velociraptor-Fullsuit-1-254975766 ) as well as most raptor drawings ( http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2011/065/2/7/velociraptor_sornaensis_female_by_beastisign-d3b36u6.png ) how it comes down and under the crotch--this will also be used to hold the tail up, again which I'll go over when we get there.

 I also started on the hands! This is the bottom of them, with the finger extensions (kept extra long for now until I decide how I want the claws to be)

 For good hold and extra nimble fingers, the foam is cut slightly and slid over the fabric.

 On the top, there are some pieces to raise it.

Then this piece which I just cut out to the same shape for each hand. Still a lot of work to go but they're a start. I also made a quick clip before the tail was done, showing the brick-laying method. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8HvykGhzzc

Foam, Johann's Trip, Elastic and Fabric!

 We headed up to Johann's today to get foam for the tail, it was 50% off today so I was quite pleased to stock myself up on it! Hopefully I can finish the entire costume without needing more, however I do intend to go up there again for fabric glue once we get that far along I'm sure. The foam is mostly 2 inch, one sheet of 3 inch and it was a fantastic deal. Originally we were going to get cheaper, white foam however Johann's doesn't sell any in more than cushion size and Hobby Lobby was closed (on a Sunday, which was something I hadn't even thought about personally).

 Plus my old pile of foam which is only slightly touched. For the feet I used some one inch from the roll and an entire scrap of 2 inch. I messed up a lot, though.

 Foam detail.

 My now complete pile of foam. And yes, I used the tail elastic to hold that roll together.

 Since I had comparisons of the other widths, heres three and two inch compared. The three is mostly to wrap around the base of the tail, will save some gluing.

 The feet! I realized I hadn't taken a picture of them side-by-side. I still intend to make the inner left toe (right foot) smaller to match, though.

 I left the room for a bit and my dog decided to take a seat on the nice foam, ahaha.

 The materials! A hot glue gun--all this time I had never imagined hot glue being the best glue for the suit but after having to go outside and use the E-6000/Super 77 every time, I'm glad to have bought the gun. It's got two settings so hopefully it won't melt the foam (or my fingers). More E-6000 and Super 77 as I'm lower on it, glue sticks, elastic for the jaw when we get there and a pin cushion because a different dog decided to chew our old one up, ahaha.

Last time we got elastic we bought the wrong kind--I saw a Caninehybrid video with Riley talking about different types of elastic and what worked best. We bought woven elastic instead of knitted, but we've got other places in the plans to use the woven so we didn't need to return it. Here are the differences you can find. The knitted will say KNITTED elastic, obviously.

 The lines go horizontally, are very thin and not very noticeable. It looks like waistband material.

 The woven elastic says so, and the lines go vertically instead. They are thick and wide, and the stretch isn't as easy as the knitted.

 The fabric we found at Johann's. I still can really only see buying it online instead of Johann's due to different factors, but we may end up purchasing one of these (although I kind of doubt it, it's not really what we want).

Details:

They're both 100% polyester.

The one on the left is very thin and light but at the same time feels almost like pleather. It's very shiny and it looks great in person but when the light hits it and it shines, it looks very ugly and fake.

The one on the right (suede) feels like it could be painted, but the one on the left does not.

 The shiny, pleather like stuff. I love the color to it but I just wish it weren't shiny. We've wanted to get 100% cotton because that will breathe better. This stuff surprisingly feels like it would let air through.

 HD pictures of fabric whoaaaa. I don't think we'll use it though, due to the shininess and the scale pattern just doesn't look right either.

 We got quite a bit of fabric for just 85¢ apiece.

 The other stuff is very soft, not much like a dinosaur but to paint it it's probably going to need to be soft. It feels somewhat like carpet, although it's suede. The color is just what I like but it's pretty thick, heavy and I don't think it would breathe much at all. It also don't really like the way it looks but it seems practical.

 At conventions, people use unnecessary flash a lot. I also intend to wear this for Halloween. So naturally I went into the closet and tested to see how the fabric looks with the flash.

 It looks pretty good from afar, but not so much upclose.

 With the shininess to it, it just doesn't look good. At all, really.

I dunno. Any opinions on it? The suede will be airbrushed with color variances, design and such to add realism to it.