DIY Monsters: Mordrude’s Monster Manual

Tips, tutorials, and walk-throughs for making realistic fursuits on a reasonable budget…

Mordrude’s Monsters

Indiegogo campaign ending 9/5/14

UPDATE! As of 11/2014, Mordrude’s Monsters was chosen to be one of Indiegogo’s “Forever Funding” projects and is still able to receive contributions and backing. Neat!

(note: I’m making much more liberal use of images from the artist’s galleries than usual, so worth saying: all images are the property of Mordrude and are used here for promotional purposes only.)

Over the last several months, my mate, Whines, has been working on a realistic hyena costume. For a newbie, the number of little challenges is vast–learning the Henson Stitch, constructing a base, casting a snout, working on cooling…months of work. And there are a lot of good tutorials here and there, but knowing where to look, who to trust, and what questions to ask is just as challenging as any of the many steps to project completion, particularly when one aims for realistic instead of cheerful mascot.

So it’s exciting to see so much advice and experience in one place, in Mordrude’s Monster Manual.

Mordrude has been building costumes for the furry community since 2010, and if you read her Terms of Service (and who doesn’t), it’s very specific in: “No mascots. Nope.” Her gallery and FA account are both chock full of critters, but she’s also generous with tutorials and walk-throughs, like the one below (the original is easier to read, but this will give a sense of her style.)

“Mordrude’s Monster Manual” is–or will be, it’s only $2000 away from its $7000 goal right now–a compilation and expansion of her tutorials, with a lot of depth and walk-throughs that her one-page format doesn’t allow for. A portion of the book is a walk-through of three fursuits (a sabre-tooth, a bull, and a wolf), each one available as one of the pledge points for the campaign. And hey, a signed copy of the book comes with the fursuit! Though at that point, I think your $3500 was probably more about the costume.

Walk-throughs in the book include textured pawpads, patterning, creating removable antlers, start to finish tips for designing, planning, and purchasing–and one that sounds amusingly halloweeny, casting jaws from a real skull.

There aren’t that many books about the fursuiter’s “trade,” and the ones that I’ve encountered have all had that uniquely “Adobe Pagemaker 2.1 on the library’s Mac” look, without a lot of glitz or photography. That Mordrude’s Monster Manual is a photocentric coffee table book as well as a reference just makes the project more compelling, a useful reference and something that’s a joy to flip through. I’m looking forward to this one.