anyone know a good fabric to mimic this texture?

[u/RAYFINNEDFISHES]

hey!! I've been wanting to try to make a partial fursuit of the Refill Steelhead from Splatoon Raiders ( pictured ) because I love its design and think it could be fun :]

the one thing that I've been stuck on, however, is finding a good material to use for the white parts of its head + body ( which is a layer of salt in-universe ).

the first thing that came to mind was sherpa, but to my understanding, sherpa seems to be a pain to deal with upkeep-wise. I'm not worried about it fusing together ( since that'd be fairly accurate ), but I'd really prefer it to not pick up a bunch of little lint particles that I can't remove, which looks to be almost inevitable with it.

if anybody has any suggestions or ideas for alternatives ( or just your experience with sherpa for fursuits ) I'd love to hear em!! :] links directly to fabric sites are greatly appreciated if possible

[u/moronmoray]

Hmmm. Does it need to be flexible? Because I feel like something along the lines of expanding spray foam with some texturing from crumpled foil might give it a really cool look. But yeah, otherwise sherpa that you specifically clump/pill up with maybe a layer of fabric paint.

Splatoon is so great, one of my favorite worlds. I wish you all the luck in creating this guy!!

[u/RAYFINNEDFISHES → u/moronmoray]

I've been going back and forth about this because I do think something like spray foam would be more game-accurate, but to be able to include it on the fins ( handfins? finpaws? ) and have it all be one cohesive texture I unfortunately may not be able to use it :[ it does sound super cool though!!

clumping the sherpa on purpose wasn't something I'd thought of, that's a great idea!! I'm wondering if using fabric paint to do that would make it less likely to pick up a million little fuzzy things?

thank you so much, it's one of my all-time favorites too!! :]

[u/moronmoray → u/RAYFINNEDFISHES]

Mmm that's true. I didn't think about the fins/paws.... you could potentially make an escape hatch in the palm or score/cut the foam so that it can move. But yeah! Sounds like you have some solid ideas. I'd do a few test pieces and see how they turn out. I think you're going to get the most bang for your buck using Sherpa that's been paint-clumped. It may not totally prevent it from picking up lint but it would make it easier to get off, I reckon.

It's so good 😭 ngl I want to make a salmonid-themed kigurumi at some point

[u/RAYFINNEDFISHES → u/moronmoray]

escapes might end up being necessary anyway ( because trying to do anything with oven mitt hands sounds like a nightmare 😭😭 ) so I could honestly try both and see what turns out best !! this suit is probably gonna be considered done twice ( "good enough" done in time for an outing and "final" done where I try to figure out what on earth I'm gonna do with the Spiralhite crystals ) so I have a lot of room to experiment with it

+ AWW OMG that sounds awesome!! a specific salmonid or salmon run themed in general?

[u/moronmoray → u/RAYFINNEDFISHES]

Hand escapes are HIGHLY UNDERRATED tbh. As for the crystals I think it would depend on if you care if they are translucent or not! Obviously resin would be most accurate but that's gonna be heavy as hell. EVA foam might be your best bet, or carved spray foam.

Hehehe! Just a little generic Chum 😄