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A talk about Furs - a Fursuit maker perspective
11 years ago
A little rant about fur....
1)Not all whites are created equal
There's white.... and then there's white.... Shades of white can vary widely. I can order a bunch of different whites in varying styles and pile length and discover some are more off-white and some are more ivory and some are more cream and some are the most blinding unicorn white. White can also look different in different lighting settings... a fur that looks okay under florescent lights may look completely different under natural sunlight. This can make color matching a real challenge (especially if we want shorter fur and some longer accents. This goes for other furs too... one color in one style may be a slightly different shade in another style. We can do things like airbrushing to help blend furs, but there may always be a subtle variation.
--We do our best to color match as best we can... but sometimes that's not possible.
2) Not all furs shave the same
Shaving fur should be fun!.... Like grooming a dog!.... Except it's not.
Faux fur is plastic, it doesn't shave the same as natural hair. Some furs shave better than others and some are REALLY hard to shave.... but they're all murder on your clippers - even with cleaning and oiling and proper maintenance. It can take several HOURS to trim a fursuit face depending on the fur (DF fur is notoriously challenging to shave).
--Please keep in mind, if I say I will NOT shave your body fur to be shorter.... this is why.
3) You can't dye fur
People seem to forget this one... a LOT! Fur is PLASTIC, it can't hold dye ( before you try to argue with me.... yes, technically it CAN, but not the way the dye was intended - Dyes are designed to absorb into a material, which is why only certain materials can be dyed in the first place - materials that can be dyed are natural fibers like wool or cotton not plastic like faux fur or polyester). Dyeing, airbrushing, painting fur all does the same thing..... the color does not absorb into the faux fur fibers, but simply sits on top of them. It changes the texture and feel of the faux fur fibers, and will fade/wash out/rub off over time. Because of this, most makers limit dyeing/painting/airbrushing to spot work (ie, small pieces) which will be less noticeable to changes due to fading over time.
--If we can't find the exact color you are looking for don't ask us to dye fur...... we can't do it.
4) Furs go out of print
Yes, sometimes furs are made and sold, then no more of that fur is made. This can be a challenge when doing repairs to an old suit. Dye lots can also change between bolts. If I buy some chocolate brown from a vendor, then buy some additional chocolate brown a few months later.... the browns may be slightly different. This is because one bolt of the same color may be from a different dye lot as the next bolt. The color change may not be drastic, but it will still be noticeable to some extent.
--If you want additional fur for your suit for repairs, it never hurts to ask if you can get your maker to order additional yardage for you to purchase. Most of the time, we have no problems doing it, as long as you pay for the extra fur.
5)Sometimes.... you're going to have to settle.
Look... some fur colors just don't exist. It would be lovely if every color/style/length/texture under the sun could be purchased on a whim, but it's just not so. I sometimes spend several months trawling the internet for that elusive color/length and coming up empty handed. This is often the reason lots of fursuit makers become fur horders... when you stumble upon a rare color you buy it right away for fears you will never find it's like again.
**this particular point is only a half truth.... you CAN get every fur color if you're willing to PAY for it. National Fiber Technologies (http://www.nftech.com/), does make custom fur in any color/length/thickness you want.... but it's ungodly expensive. Fursuit makers aren't made of money... we really can't afford to use NFT fur without charging ungodly prices.... so you have to decide what is most important to you..... a close inexpensive match or an ungodly expensive exact match**
--We do our very best to find the furs that will be the best for your suit... we may not be able to match exactly, but we try very hard to get as close as possible. Please do not ask us to shave a huge piece of fur or dye a fur to get an exact color ... sometimes you do just have to settle
1)Not all whites are created equal
There's white.... and then there's white.... Shades of white can vary widely. I can order a bunch of different whites in varying styles and pile length and discover some are more off-white and some are more ivory and some are more cream and some are the most blinding unicorn white. White can also look different in different lighting settings... a fur that looks okay under florescent lights may look completely different under natural sunlight. This can make color matching a real challenge (especially if we want shorter fur and some longer accents. This goes for other furs too... one color in one style may be a slightly different shade in another style. We can do things like airbrushing to help blend furs, but there may always be a subtle variation.
--We do our best to color match as best we can... but sometimes that's not possible.
2) Not all furs shave the same
Shaving fur should be fun!.... Like grooming a dog!.... Except it's not.
Faux fur is plastic, it doesn't shave the same as natural hair. Some furs shave better than others and some are REALLY hard to shave.... but they're all murder on your clippers - even with cleaning and oiling and proper maintenance. It can take several HOURS to trim a fursuit face depending on the fur (DF fur is notoriously challenging to shave).
--Please keep in mind, if I say I will NOT shave your body fur to be shorter.... this is why.
3) You can't dye fur
People seem to forget this one... a LOT! Fur is PLASTIC, it can't hold dye ( before you try to argue with me.... yes, technically it CAN, but not the way the dye was intended - Dyes are designed to absorb into a material, which is why only certain materials can be dyed in the first place - materials that can be dyed are natural fibers like wool or cotton not plastic like faux fur or polyester). Dyeing, airbrushing, painting fur all does the same thing..... the color does not absorb into the faux fur fibers, but simply sits on top of them. It changes the texture and feel of the faux fur fibers, and will fade/wash out/rub off over time. Because of this, most makers limit dyeing/painting/airbrushing to spot work (ie, small pieces) which will be less noticeable to changes due to fading over time.
--If we can't find the exact color you are looking for don't ask us to dye fur...... we can't do it.
4) Furs go out of print
Yes, sometimes furs are made and sold, then no more of that fur is made. This can be a challenge when doing repairs to an old suit. Dye lots can also change between bolts. If I buy some chocolate brown from a vendor, then buy some additional chocolate brown a few months later.... the browns may be slightly different. This is because one bolt of the same color may be from a different dye lot as the next bolt. The color change may not be drastic, but it will still be noticeable to some extent.
--If you want additional fur for your suit for repairs, it never hurts to ask if you can get your maker to order additional yardage for you to purchase. Most of the time, we have no problems doing it, as long as you pay for the extra fur.
5)Sometimes.... you're going to have to settle.
Look... some fur colors just don't exist. It would be lovely if every color/style/length/texture under the sun could be purchased on a whim, but it's just not so. I sometimes spend several months trawling the internet for that elusive color/length and coming up empty handed. This is often the reason lots of fursuit makers become fur horders... when you stumble upon a rare color you buy it right away for fears you will never find it's like again.
**this particular point is only a half truth.... you CAN get every fur color if you're willing to PAY for it. National Fiber Technologies (http://www.nftech.com/), does make custom fur in any color/length/thickness you want.... but it's ungodly expensive. Fursuit makers aren't made of money... we really can't afford to use NFT fur without charging ungodly prices.... so you have to decide what is most important to you..... a close inexpensive match or an ungodly expensive exact match**
--We do our very best to find the furs that will be the best for your suit... we may not be able to match exactly, but we try very hard to get as close as possible. Please do not ask us to shave a huge piece of fur or dye a fur to get an exact color ... sometimes you do just have to settle
I still wouldn't use them, they are very challenging to work with, and most suit makers do not have the studio space to work with acid dyes.
Same as why I refuse to trim down large pieces of fur.... I don't dye fur because it's too much work for too little reward. Most fursuit makers are one man operations... we have to crank out many suits over the course of a month in order to make a living wage. We don't have the time or resources to be custom dying fur or custom shaving fur for every customer.... if that's the case, we may as well order NFT fur and charge 10x our current prices.
We've done extensive testing of most of the available polyester dyes on faux fur. Aside from using industrial dyes which are so toxic that you can't pour the runoff down the drain, I think we've tried most of them.
One of the main problems is that the dye requires heat to take darker than a pastel shade. Heating up faux fur and not melting it is really hard. It pretty much always changes the texture at least a bit, some moreso than others. So we found the furs that melted the least, then it's a matter of putting them in a large pot of water on the stovetop and nearly constantly stirring them for about 45 minutes until they're ready to remove. Some of the final test swatches that we did using the best reacting furs and dyes seemed to go pretty well. I wash tested them and fade tested them for a month and it seemed promising.
So then we took on a project to guinea pig dyeing furs. It took many tries to get the dye colour ratios right to attain the colours we wanted in test swatches. We made up a huge jar of the dye solution so we could be sure not to run out of the colour we made. Then we cut the tail and ear pieces and tried actually dyeing it. And the colour ended up being different than the tests, even though we did many and calculated all of the fabric weights vs dye amounts properly, and controlled time and temperature really well. Larger pieces of fur than our test swatches were problematic because even with constant stirring the pile would still want to stick to itself oddly, and despite prewashing parts of the fur took dye better/worse than others. And it ended up really messing with the texture anyways.
This was the end result of the 3 shades that we dyed http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13222681/ you can see up near the top of the tail in the right hand pic there's a dark spot, and there were a lot of other inconsistencies that are hard to see here. And these weren't even large pieces of fur, but without some sort of industrial set up, or maaybe a giant metal wash tub on like 6 hot plates, I don't even know how you'd attempt to dye enough fur for a bodysuit. Considering that if the piece isn't completely flat in the water it's not going to dye evenly.
So there's some practical results from months of testing by two people who knew what they're doing. In short, if you want to argue semantics, then it is possible to dye faux fur. Is it in any way feasible for a fursuit maker to accurately dye enough faux fur for anything more than a marking the size of your hand? No.
i have been debating to think about going back to school, im sure there is something like that around here, Boston is all sorts of artsy
sewing is my hobby though, dunno if i want to make myself a fulltime career out of it
~Fawnix
Also: all punky muppet is shit compared to the nice 1" whites, blacks and earthtones from Monterrey Mills. I really dislike using punky muppet but am forced to because of the array of non earth tone colors.
In the end I had to settle for fleece. Not an ideal medium, but they actually make colors close to the one I was looking for.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/183498....._home_active_8
Maybe I'll order one piece to examine.
Thanks for the link though! Should this work out and the color of the pic is accurate, we may have a winner!
1. Used Black got very pale grey /Used grey got a very pale purple colour / to get a darker shade you need to dye the same piece several times ,letting it dry each time .
2.It does fade with each wash just like airbrushing/dry-brushing will do
3.You can't use boiling water which is meant for Rit dye as it damages the fur fibres .
4.Takes ages to dry and all round a pain to do and if you are wanting a dark shade you are wasting a lot of money on the dye .
so you are correct with the dye lol .
Fursuiting around in a fursuit made with minky fur or cuddle fleece would fall apart after a few hours of wear.
Same for plushies! I just finished a commission for a friend that took 2 months of continuous testing to dye the fleece to the right color. In the end, we both decided to go with the "good enough" option of me just painting it with super watered down acrylics, and hoping it doesn't fade in the future.
My husband once asked me why I have so much yellow fleece, until I showed him it was a yard each of several colors. Same with black sealy-type fur.
If I was rich, I'd experiment with all that goes into fur-making and dyeing, but alas, none of us are!
Ya, from now on I'm taking all dying off the table for any commission it's wholly not worth the effort for a temporary fix/ something that will eventually fade or change the fur texture.
and oh the woes of shaving lol. >.<
Thank you for posting this. I've been wanting to vent about this subject for a while
NRRRRG SO F***ING THIS
my fur hoard is huge, so huge... so huge. And just got so much more and of it the peachy orange is just 100% unplanned use bought for the hoard because I have never seen its color before so I grabbed 3 yards just to have TwT
basing it off the second life model i used it called for white and lilac
white? no prahblem, lilac? unavailable at the time
so i says " okay~ just get some dye and dye it, its 20?? they should have SOMETHING to dye all this plastic fabric by now"
i pick up a box of Rit dye powder
read the back of the box
put the box back down
order Royal Blue instead
best decision of my career
Totally took that out of context *facepalm*
As for the grey *shrugs* your guess is as good as mine. There used to be some varying shades available..... but remember point #4? If you find some nice ones, I'd love to hear about it.
Shaving fur is tricky too. Some fur really does shave better and more evenly than others.
Another thing that I see often is when people use 2 different pile lengths right next to each other like in a striped ringed tail and it usually does not look good.
With regarding rare colors...
I would love to get my hands on more of that Ivory Arctic Fox (not fox fur!). Teal and longer pile blues and mint green chinchilla type fur would also be lovely. I know the mint green chinchilla type fur exists because I saw a throw made out of it, but getting it on the retail faux fur market on the other hand is proving to be difficult.
I know it's hard to add assorted fees because most of us want to be affordable, but artists get paid a pittance as is... any other company would charge for every workable minute.
(still very happy you found the fabric you did for Grael)
So i might just go with light green :/ which doesnt fit at all..
Pain.
That is why they are so expensive.
Leave the decisions up to the professional. No means no.
Thank you for sharing this perspective. It was very interesting getting a sort of inside view.