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General

The fursuit was originally built in late 2017 over the coarse of several months. The head was constructed from green upholstry foam purchased from Jo-ann Fabric.

The original head took around a month and a half to complete, whereas the body suit was constructed over 7 days. It was all handsewn. One of the big things I wanted to stick to was modularity so parts could be swapped out as needed, but also ease of washing. So any electronics needed to be easily removed.

The Head

The first head was built so that the eye modules were pushed in like a plug and were meant to be held in by friction. However the heavier LCD screens would fall out if I looked forward.

I made several modifications to the head between 2017 and 2020 including replacing the ears, adding a fan to the jaw and replacing the eyes twice.

In 2020 I realized I could not justify continuing to piecemeal modify it. So I built an entirely new head from scratch that I use today.

The new head features a movable jaw, dedicated slots to hold the eyes in with velcro the latch it closed. The head is also slimmer and better shaped.

The Body

The body is still the same handsewn that was originally built back in 2017, albeit with a few repairs.

After changing the the character to glow, I wanted to update the bodysuit to reflect that as well. I decided on adding EL wire on the arms and legs connected to an inverter worn on a belt to power it.

To secure the EL wire to the body, I had tried sewing loops of thread on the exterior and winding the EL through the loops. However the loops would frequently break and the EL wire would hang out. Not the kind of look you'd want for glowing flesh...

Next I tried sewing velcro strips into the suit and gluing velcro to the EL wire. Those there wer some downsides. The white velcro was easily visible under the orange fur and especially where it connected fur needed to be glued over top of the EL wire to hide the velcro on the EL wire. After dealing with the glue not being strong enough to secture the velcro to the EL wire I ditched the scheme.

With thread loops and velcro out, I tried neodyium magnets. They seemed to work great at first, but as soon as I put the suit on I found the magnets were not powerful enough to hold the EL wire in place as I flexed. And like the velcro before it, the glue did not stick to the magnets.

After giving up on the magnets, I cut sheets of transparent plastic into small tubes and sewed the tubes to the exterior of the arms and legs, and then shoved the EL wire inside of them. It was labor intensive, but it actually worked pretty well. It kept the EL wire tight to the body and gave a very good tron look.

Except Xavier isn't tron looking, he has stripes like a tiger, not a glowing line. In 2021, the EL wire was retired for good. For better power efficiency and a brighter light, I switched to LEDs. I created LED modules with 4 ultra bright blue LEDs I bought from microcenter inside clear flexible piping. Each module has a Barrel jack connector I sewed chevrons of blue fur into the suit, leaving the top of the chevron open so that the LED modules can be easily removed for washing.

To diffuse the light from the LEDs, the LEDs are pointed downward towards a strip of aluminum foil that scatters the light back up and illuminates the entire blue chevron.

Other than occational short circuits from the wire rubbing through electrical tape, this design works very well.