When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all ~ binary God

The spots cover up so many details T_T Which is really the point of more realistic art - to put in so much detail that together it all just looks like a single complete thing.

My goal in art/fursuits is basically to make something where a person is unable to take it apart piece by piece and say how everything was made. If you can look at it and see each individual part or action then I've failed :o But still here are a couple photos I took during the making process.

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I don't shave furs down or anything like that on bodies - I piece the appropriate materials together. A personal thing that I just like the look of much better. Makes the final product very clean. The two greys used are a medium pile and a shorter pile - not a shaved down medium pile.

The back has sewn black spots. They are totally invisible after all the airbrushing but that was the only spot I felt secure in sewing the marking in (which will make it last forever) as anywhere else would have looked very obvious it was sewn.

This guy was an artistic choice type of commission (ie make me a snow leopard) which is definitely what I prefer. It gives me much more freedom to adjust details and markings based upon what would IMO look best and fit the available resources. It also allows me to decide what are the important parts of being a snow leopard, what are the pasrts I can make better from real life, and what are the parts that I do not need at all. I definitely chose overall appeal vs pure realism. IMO that's kinda what art is about ;p I will buy a watercolour of a tiger over a photo of a tiger any day :D (I love ink and watercolour together btw. In a way I think I do a 3D version of that medium)

It took a lot of thinking and drafting for me to decide how to make this guy work with two shorter grey furs when access to a longer grey fur would have been easier. But with light grey you definitely take whatever you can find lol. And airbrushing the whole thing over white wasn't really an option to me.

Airbrushing markings sure, but not the base coat of colour. Even if you can get the new colour all the way down to the roots (basically meaning you have to dye the piece and then cut and place them - not airbrushing an already made bodysuit which almost always results in 'tipped' fur where you can see the lighter base poke through as the person walks. Even if you take an incredible amount of time at it) then you end up with an issue where as soon as the person washes it, the whole suit will fade at different rates. Resulting in all over patchyness in the colour. And this patchyness cannot be touched up later very easily since you have to work with colour over colour which is easy to make a muddled mess out of.

And I do prefer that my customers can feel secure in washing their suits lol.

But snow leopards are shaggy down the back (or that is how I prefer them anyways. Plus the tail had to be longer fur. I had no choice on that since my other pet peeve is short fur on tails) And the neck was also longer fur because neck ruffs YEAH! So in the end I compromised by building a 'bridge' of longer white down his back. I contemplated if I would want to airbrush this white bridge or not but as I worked on it it became obvious that it needed to be darker. I'm fine with that - a square foot of base airbrushing is acceptable lol. It will fade at a steady rate and the sewn markings can be airbrushed over (black fur really can't be airbrushed visually. Not at the viscosity of paint that I use.)

I never really know how thing I make are going to look in the end ^_^


Finished suit photos-> http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7247139