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Okay, I think now is a good time to reveal the next and most time-consuming (yet strangely addictive once you get the hang of it), finger-aching stage of the WIP: Hair-punching. 
Hair-punching is a special technique used to create a very realistic 'hairy skin' appearance, which is a professional special-effect religiously used for werewolf suits and puppets in horror movies that not a lot of CGI special effects can scarcely compete with on the realism/life-like scale. This type of costume-SFX is what seperates a true werewolf costume from all other animal costumes as it is the ultimate way to make a suit seem so real whereas normal costumes are often just all fur sewn together or fur glued on to spandex and such (which at most times even a four year old can tell is fake).
However Hair-punching may be extremely cool-looking and actually quite easy to do once you get the hang of it, it is a very, VERY slow process especially when you're doing all the work by yourself without a team; for example I started hair-punching my werewolf suit on April 16th 2012...that's almost nine months and I'm still nowhere never finished. Plus, depending on what hair you are punching and what rubbery material you use for skin e.g. I used liquid latex, being too rough when punching the needle into the 'skin' can cause the needle to wear out and snap; now needles breaking does happen occassionally but still you want to avoid that, because not only will it mean that you'll need to get a new hair-punching needle but you might also accidentally break the needle inside the suit, making it impossible to get the broken bit of needle out of the suit without tearing the 'skin' open and unsafe to leave inside the suit. So you need to hair-punch with care and don't rush the work, in the case you do break a needle always make sure the needle's not broken inside the 'skin' and use tweezers to carefully pull out the bit of broken needle, and then throw the broken needle away. Nobody said hair-punching's easy, it does require a lot of time and dedication, but the hard work is 100% worth it if you want to build a unique life-like hairy monster.
You also need specialised needles to do this technique. It requires special needles called 'crown punch' needles for most of the time, however different textures and types of hair need different needles, e.g. thin crown-punch needles are used for hair-punching real human-hair and very fine doll hair. You can actually use felting needles as well which work on any hair-type, and they are quicker to work with, but they don't create an as realistic appearance as a crown-punch needle when you trim the long hair unless you intend to keep the hair very long. I only use felting needles for covering large areas then use a crown-punch needle to go around the edges of the present long hair to make it look like the hair is growning shorter and thinner on some places of the body. You CANNOT use a normal needle for hair-punching because if you do the hair will not stay inside the 'skin' and will just pull out with the needle or fall out when you move the suit the slightest bit, no matter how deep you may punch the needle in.
Felting needles can be obtained easily from any sewing shop or arts/crafts store and are quite cheap, but crown-punch needles are next to impossible to find in any shop except online (PS: don't look on ebay because I already looked when shopping for mine, there aren't any on ebay) and cost a little more than your average felting needle. I bought my needles from www.makeup-fx.com (they also sell tutorial DVDs and have a short hair-punching tutorial on their site) and whenever I break a needle I just buy a bunch of new felting needles from my local art store (I have to be very careful not to break my needles from makeup-fx.com though because I can't replace those ones so easily). If you don't want to spend so much or wait for delivery though you can make a crown-punch needle yourself, but I wouldn't reccommend it because it's harder to make a crown-punch needle that works properly than it is to buy a real one that does work.
Before you attempt to hair-punch your costume or puppet etc it is always best to do a test on a sample piece of rubbery-material and hair first. Also you cannot use cuttings from sheets of synthetic fur (long or short) for hair-punching as that kind of hair is too thin and weak to stay in the 'skin', and will just fall out.
...man, that was a long Artist's Comment. If you read all of it, well done and I hope you find what you have read here useful.
Photos of the body-suit before starting the hair-punching: [link]
photos of it without paint here: [link]
photos of it without fur/hair here: [link]
photos of the latex still drying here: [link]
photos of it without the latex on it are here: [link]
Costume design and body-suit making (c)
me
Please feel free to comment. X3
Hair-punching is a special technique used to create a very realistic 'hairy skin' appearance, which is a professional special-effect religiously used for werewolf suits and puppets in horror movies that not a lot of CGI special effects can scarcely compete with on the realism/life-like scale. This type of costume-SFX is what seperates a true werewolf costume from all other animal costumes as it is the ultimate way to make a suit seem so real whereas normal costumes are often just all fur sewn together or fur glued on to spandex and such (which at most times even a four year old can tell is fake).
However Hair-punching may be extremely cool-looking and actually quite easy to do once you get the hang of it, it is a very, VERY slow process especially when you're doing all the work by yourself without a team; for example I started hair-punching my werewolf suit on April 16th 2012...that's almost nine months and I'm still nowhere never finished. Plus, depending on what hair you are punching and what rubbery material you use for skin e.g. I used liquid latex, being too rough when punching the needle into the 'skin' can cause the needle to wear out and snap; now needles breaking does happen occassionally but still you want to avoid that, because not only will it mean that you'll need to get a new hair-punching needle but you might also accidentally break the needle inside the suit, making it impossible to get the broken bit of needle out of the suit without tearing the 'skin' open and unsafe to leave inside the suit. So you need to hair-punch with care and don't rush the work, in the case you do break a needle always make sure the needle's not broken inside the 'skin' and use tweezers to carefully pull out the bit of broken needle, and then throw the broken needle away. Nobody said hair-punching's easy, it does require a lot of time and dedication, but the hard work is 100% worth it if you want to build a unique life-like hairy monster.
You also need specialised needles to do this technique. It requires special needles called 'crown punch' needles for most of the time, however different textures and types of hair need different needles, e.g. thin crown-punch needles are used for hair-punching real human-hair and very fine doll hair. You can actually use felting needles as well which work on any hair-type, and they are quicker to work with, but they don't create an as realistic appearance as a crown-punch needle when you trim the long hair unless you intend to keep the hair very long. I only use felting needles for covering large areas then use a crown-punch needle to go around the edges of the present long hair to make it look like the hair is growning shorter and thinner on some places of the body. You CANNOT use a normal needle for hair-punching because if you do the hair will not stay inside the 'skin' and will just pull out with the needle or fall out when you move the suit the slightest bit, no matter how deep you may punch the needle in.
Felting needles can be obtained easily from any sewing shop or arts/crafts store and are quite cheap, but crown-punch needles are next to impossible to find in any shop except online (PS: don't look on ebay because I already looked when shopping for mine, there aren't any on ebay) and cost a little more than your average felting needle. I bought my needles from www.makeup-fx.com (they also sell tutorial DVDs and have a short hair-punching tutorial on their site) and whenever I break a needle I just buy a bunch of new felting needles from my local art store (I have to be very careful not to break my needles from makeup-fx.com though because I can't replace those ones so easily). If you don't want to spend so much or wait for delivery though you can make a crown-punch needle yourself, but I wouldn't reccommend it because it's harder to make a crown-punch needle that works properly than it is to buy a real one that does work.
Before you attempt to hair-punch your costume or puppet etc it is always best to do a test on a sample piece of rubbery-material and hair first. Also you cannot use cuttings from sheets of synthetic fur (long or short) for hair-punching as that kind of hair is too thin and weak to stay in the 'skin', and will just fall out.
...man, that was a long Artist's Comment. If you read all of it, well done and I hope you find what you have read here useful.
Photos of the body-suit before starting the hair-punching: [link]
photos of it without paint here: [link]
photos of it without fur/hair here: [link]
photos of the latex still drying here: [link]
photos of it without the latex on it are here: [link]
Costume design and body-suit making (c)
mePlease feel free to comment. X3
Image size
4191x3137px 17.78 MB
© 2013 - 2024 Farumir
Comments12
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What base is this under the hair it looks like a skin suit with 2 inch foam but almost has a rubbery look? I am working one a costume will use for every halloween for the rest of my life but am truing to make it really real and i love the way this piece looks could you tell me what you used to make the torso?