# Help with first-time fursuit making! Big tail?



## Yendysear (Sep 4, 2017)

Hello, this is my first post on here.

I just recently joined the fandom and am almost done designing my sona, which I want to make a suit for when I'm done designing her. I've been looking at fursuit making tutorials and stuff, and I understand pretty much how I'll go about making it. The biggest issue I've been having is finding a way to make her tail. She's an alien squirrel/cat creature, and she has a very big, very fluffy tail with a wide base. All the tutorials I've found for tails are for wolf tails or similar, and they're helpful about the general process but I'm left clueless as to how to make the big floof tail. 

I also need some advice for eyes, since my sona has all black eyes with glowy yellow irises. Most eye tutorials have that you see through the pupil: the black part. Would I be able to see if I were to position the eyes so that I would be looking through the inner black part of the eyes? I'm just worried that the irises will end up blocking my vision. 

I'll post a pic of her character sheet one I'm done with it, I hope I gave eough info for now?


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## Inkblooded (Sep 6, 2017)

Hmm. If you want your tail to stand upright like a squirrel's, you might need to use wire or something as a kind of skeleton, which could be difficult.


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## Aces (Sep 10, 2017)

May I suggest pool noodles as an affordable, stiff source of core? Noodles with holes could be cut and strung like beads to give some articulation.

For a tail that copious, I would strongly suggest having a good 2/3rds of the tail in a sort of coiled position, with attach points at the tailbone and between the shoulderblades. From there, the latter half could be more flexible and wielded as a prop.

As for the eyes, what methods  and styles are you currently looking at? Are you going to go full-on glowie eyes?


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## metaldrgn (Sep 23, 2017)

you could use an light weight, rigid expansion foam. You would just have to protect the fabric.


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## crystallinecanine (Sep 25, 2017)

If the eyes are all black, you could just use all buckram material and paint the sclera black and pupil yellow so you can get the best visibility possible. Hope this makes sense??


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## Yendysear (Oct 17, 2017)

Aaa thank you everyone who's replied! ;^; Sorry I didn't reply back I forgot my password and then wasn't able to be online because of schoolwork eheh...

I attached my sona ref to this comment so if anyone wanted to see it they can. 



Aces said:


> May I suggest pool noodles as an affordable, stiff source of core? Noodles with holes could be cut and strung like beads to give some articulation.
> 
> For a tail that copious, I would strongly suggest having a good 2/3rds of the tail in a sort of coiled position, with attach points at the tailbone and between the shoulderblades. From there, the latter half could be more flexible and wielded as a prop.
> 
> As for the eyes, what methods  and styles are you currently looking at? Are you going to go full-on glowie eyes?



Pool noodles seems like a good idea, thanks! I'll try that. For suit-making purposes I'll probably still have to just make it smaller than the actual thing.
Also the eyes are shown in the ref I'm posting; the sclera is black while the iris/pupil is glowie yellow. I've mostly been looking at flat toony eye making methods as idk how it'd work to do follow-me eyes with it.



crystallinecanine said:


> If the eyes are all black, you could just use all buckram material and paint the sclera black and pupil yellow so you can get the best visibility possible. Hope this makes sense??



Ye after looking at more tutorials that's what I was thinking! I thought maybe I could just use glow-in-the-dark yellow paint for the pupil part? I just want it to glow in the dark mneheeeh..


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## Kellan Meig'h (Oct 18, 2017)

One FC panel had an explanation of a method to having a rigid vertical tail. It had a rigid delrin rod core, bent into a U shape at the base, then that was attached to a very wide leather belt. If you do this, wear a real respirator when you heat this stuff with a heat gun! Delrin gives off toxic fumes when heated!

I believe this was the way the tail was made for the Manticore fursuit "Dar'Rushk" owned by Aeto. Lance Ikegawa of LX, Ltd had a big hand in the creation of this suit and although I don't have my notes handy, I think it was Lance himself that hosted this panel at FC and put forth this procedure. I am pretty sure Aeto was at the panel, too.

They had pieces of the NFT "Stretch fur" that they allowed us to drool over. I still have to try to do *"The Old Warhorse"* Ver 2.0 in stretch NFT fur.


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