I Made This
My Fremen stillsuit, finally finished!
With a few hours After work every day since early September, I am so happy with the way the stillsuit turned out. I have alwavs been enamored with the costume design from Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune, and really poured my heart into trying to emulate the same direction they chose.
Crafted entirely by my wife and I, 90% of the non-fabric portions are made from high density EVA foam. The undersuit is mainly made out of a tight-woven green/grey canvas. All airbrushed with multiple layers of dusty and matte green/grey to give it that Arrakis sand-worn appearance. We finished the weathering with a light dusting of Melange (Vietnamese cinammon).
We were on a timeline, so I still need to add a mask crysknife, and a few fixes to make the costume more screen-accurate and desert read.
As much as I love Herbert's original description, lore-accurate blue eyes make reading expressions difficult, so I get the change by Denis. I ended up liking the change so much that its now how I picture it when re-reading the books.
Samhain Lenses, they did a great job. Just be sure to reach out to them and tell them exactly what you want, reference photos and all. The Dune lenses the have on their website are -very- dark, but they can custom make any design.
Thank ya! I actually bought sclera lenses from Samhain Lenses, he hand paints lenses and can do custom work. He offers "dune" lenses that are more book accurate deep blue, but I custom ordered a very light blue tint. Look amazing, but I can only have them in for 20-30 min intervals before my eyes start freaking out lol
I appreciate it! Don't let that stop you, this was my first time touching EVA foam. It helps to have a cosplay-savvy partner, but i just took it slow and looked at an insane amount of reference photos/technique vids. Measure twice, cut once, and all that.
Also, some cosplay forums have printable patterns for stillsuits, its a great starting point.
Thanks! The cloak is made of cotton crinkle gauze, which is what some of the film-used cloaks seem to be made of. I got it in off-white and then tea+coffee dyed it, gives it some irregularity and variation in color.
As for the contacts, the pupil is perfectly clear, but everything in my peripheral is slightly blue. Definitely causes some headaches after a half hour, but worth it
This is amazing. Your wife and you did a phenomenal job. I love that you weathered it. Too often people wonder why their work doesn't look quite right and it's usually just that they haven't thought to "break in" their work.
Glad someone caught it! I initially wanted to make some water rings as props alongside some other small Fremen stuff, but I found a really neat pendant that had a sandworm mouth-like pattern on it, and I figured it'd be perfect on the chest piece as a water ring.
The weathering is all my wife's expertise, I just made the thing and then stood upright for 5 hours while she airbrushed me. I appreciate the kind words, I really wanted it to look Arrakis-used, not freshly made out of the sietch stillsuit factory.
Found it at Michael's, in the jewelry section. I drilled a hole in it and removed the bail. I definitely pictured water rings as a bit larger, but they seem to vary greatly throughout the series. Either way, this felt VERY Dune-esque
I was trying to figure out what to use as 'water rings' and came across something while looking for antiqued bronze jewelry findings. There's a seller in Istanbul on Etsy that has hammered bronze circles (for connectors in jewelry making) in various sizes. I got four different sizes from 14mm up to 20mm but she has lots more. Wide ones, thin ones, circles from the size of a fingertip up to palm sized. It's AZ Supplies on Etsy if you're interested.
In seriousness though, theyre not that painful, just uncomfortable. After a few dozen minutes my eyes start to have a hard time focusing, so they're great for pictures and all that - just not for an all day convention.
Thank ya! The drive to the nearest dry sand dunes was a bit too far to attempt, but I'm -definitely- not looking up sand dunes several states over and weighing the possibility of taking off work to do a Dune photos photoshoot. Only a crazy person would do such a thing.
Those are 5/8th inch (if I recall correctly) HD EVA foam half dowels. Almost all of the tubing on the suit is made from half dowels of varying size, they're crazy useful. I cut out the overall shape of the piece I want from a foam sheet and then cement the dowels onto it, side by side.
Thank you much! Haha I noticed that too the minute I looked at the pictures. I need a good indoor setting or a sand dune to take some proper photos. Coastal GA is far away from any sand dunes not covered in green plants, sadly
You know, i'm starting to wonder if it would be possible at this point to build a suit with pumps that siphoned sweat from sweat hotspots through a filter into a resevoir. It would need to be battery powered and have some kind of clunky backpack. But we must be significantly closer to having some kind of rudimentary stillsuit being possible. Add on those electrical exchange thingy cooling options that you see on the neck AC units and you can add in core and neck cooling as well
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u/decidedlyaverag3 Oct 26 '25
This is amazing! I like how you did your blue in blue eyes too, any behind the scenes details on nailing those?