this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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Is this true? (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
 
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[–] knightly@pawb.social 168 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

More or less, yeah.

Fabrics and polyurethane foam used to be the only options for fursuits, but this started shifting over the last 10 years or so. Some enterprising furries started molding components like teeth, claws, and noses from soft rubber materials, which experienced a brief renaissance before hard plastic 3d-printed parts started supplanting the more labor-intensive custom molded pieces.

At the time when this was posted, hard plastic parts had become common for new fursuits, but now that 3d printers can use TPU and other flexible materials, they've become the new standard. Many fursuit makers actually use this technique to print the whole frame of the fursuit head, making them more durable while also improving airflow over the old-style carved polyurethane foam head bases;

A pic of an old-style carved polyurethane foam head base.

A pic of a new-style 3d printed TPU head base.

[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 63 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 16 points 1 week ago

Lol, I don't have one, but I post on Lemmy a lot, so there's that. =3

[–] kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I would also like to subscribe to your newsletter

[–] knightly@pawb.social 8 points 1 week ago

Lol, I don't have one, but I post on Lemmy a lot, so there's that. =3

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This is so cool. Shit like this is why I love being in community with furries, despite not being one myself. I'm always awed by the creativity

(Plus furries always throw the best parties)

[–] knightly@pawb.social 11 points 1 week ago

I love it too, especially with how quickly the community evolves. New techniques catch on and spread like wildfire, and we make a great indicator species for the health of online spaces.

(Can confirm about the parties too =3)

[–] DBCooper@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago
[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I always found it weird how fursuit snoots widen as they expand forward, unlike the animals they depict. I know it enhances the cartoony look, but it looks too exaggerated for my dumb tastes

[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 week ago

There are realistically proportioned fursuit heads too, they look AWESOME

[–] 2hundredpancakes@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What the other two people said

[–] knightly@pawb.social 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Lol, I don't have one, but I post on Lemmy a lot, so there's that. =3

[–] tpyo@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Could you address the booping context?

[–] knightly@pawb.social 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That feels like part of the joke to me, I've never heard of someone's nose getting damaged by a camera boop. XD

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

i feel like it's not a "i damaged my nose" but a "your nose had a hard bit on it that scratched lens on my iphone when we were trying to take a selfie" combined with the "we damaged our noses booping them together too hard". i dunno, outside looking in.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm probably missing some context here as well. Camera boops feel like a meme from a short-form video site like Vine or TikTok, which I don't have any direct experience with.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

if you're going to do camera boops, wouldn't you want to, idk, make your nose out of... suede or something nooooo veloour fuck i think you just awoke something in me

With my last breath I curse knightly the Sneptaur

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[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks for sharing this info, because you've given me some interesting ideas to ponder. My personal craft domain is garment making, and in recent years, I've been having a lot of fun exploring stuff that exists in the space between "clothing" and "costume". I don't have much experience in 3D printing, so the stuff about 3D printing flexible materials like TPU is new to me. I should explore this more, because I bet I could make some awesome stuff with this method (such as in corsetry)

[–] knightly@pawb.social 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Definitely do look into this, and check out some of the work folks are already doing with combining fabrics and 3d printing. =D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ8Gg0dPx0g

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[–] Chivera@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago
[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That makes at least four of us.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 8 points 1 week ago

XD

I have an approximate knowledge of many things and a fascination with new tech, but I've only been posting on Lemmy recently. Guess I oughta get started on a real newsletter. XD

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[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 66 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Could you imagine having to take your thousand dollar fursuit head to a shop for repairs after only a few outings? I’d be pissed.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I should have assumed, but I am just now realizing the suits cost that much and that there are infact fursuit repair shops. I would have thought it was going into a fabric store.... Living over here in my isolated ignorance I guess lol

(Comically I had to go back and edit pursuit to fursuit because it wasn't in my phones standard diction)

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They've been around a long time actually. Somebody had to make mascot costumes, and i imagine that skillset translates pretty well to fursuits

[–] Trashboat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 46 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Mascots are just commercially acceptable fursonas

[–] CXORA@aussie.zone 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Mascots are corporate / sports fursonas.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

And the people behind those corporate fursonas hate it. Horny furries drove cereal mascot Tony the Tiger off of Twitter. XD

[–] CXORA@aussie.zone 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Horny furries got Tony the Tiger off?? 👀

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[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They're expensive for the same kind of reasons that getting a tailor to custom make a normal suit from scratch would be expensive. Takes a lot of labor and only a relatively small pool of people have the relevant skills, plus some of the material costs add up.

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 18 points 1 week ago

This is a big part of why I love being in community with furries, despite not being one myself.

I've done a lot of bespoke clothing making — mostly for myself, but occasionally I've done things on commission. People are often astounded at how much high quality craftsmanship costs when the skilled labour is properly compensated.

I once wore a €20,000 dress (it was rented for me by a girlfriend so I could attend a swanky event with her). Before we went out, I was poring over all the construction details, desperate to learn all I could from this absurd scenario I had found myself in. I remember feeling weirdly dismayed to learn that there wasn't a single thing in that dress that would be beyond my own skill level. Instead, it was just countless little hand finished details that must've taken an inordinate amount of time and care to do. For example, all the seam allowances catch stitched down (whenever they weren't fully enclosed in a french seam or similar). Truly high quality items take time, and can't be easily automated. Sure, there are components that can be optimised with computers or machines, but it requires a skilled human to actually integrate all this into the completed piece.

I have a friend who uses to draw furry porn, and she said she found the experience to be super artistically liberating, because for the first time in her artistic career, she had people haggling her prices up, because she was way underpricing her works. On average, furries seem to have a greater level of respect for the time and skill that goes into making custom things, which I love. My friend is now making art in a domain that's closer to her own personal artistic interests, but she says that she will always cherish the time she spent in the furry community, because it gave her the confidence she needed to advocate for the value of her art and her skills when she was chasing her dreams.

[–] knightly@pawb.social 11 points 1 week ago

That sort of wardrobe malfunction is not terribly uncommon since fursuit-making is still mostly a cottage industry where each piece is a one-off custom, but most reputable fursuit-makers offer a limited-time warranty to cover minor alterations and repairs.

Furry conventions also usually have someone offering repair services (sometimes even for free) in the dealer's den in addition to the tables selling everything from parts and accessories to entire pre-made fullsuits.

[–] ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Why are people booping with camera lenses?

[–] spinne@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hard to tell how close you are with a snout you can't feel maybe

[–] ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I suppose in a crowded convention space where you're trying to get full lengths of people you could get to that distance? Surely you'd still want a longer lens though otherwise everything's going to be wildly distorted?

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 29 points 1 week ago

Arms race between fursuit noses and camera lenses when?

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can remove that little tip from bus hammers and glue them to the noses in order to instantly shatter any glass like material that comes into contact with it. Allegedly.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Really only for tempered glass like car windows. Regular glass would just get a little ding.

[–] Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A little ding is enough to render a camera lens pretty useless.

[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A cracked lens still takes pictures pretty well without any visual artefacts

[–] Redjard@reddthat.com 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Most lenses only care about the angular light distribution, essentially averaging over the lens surface. So a ding or crack would just add a tiny portion of grey or black to the entire image

Edit: This is for cracking the front protective glass of a camera lens. If an actual optical lens splits in two it will be misaligned and bad things will happen.

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[–] deus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)
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[–] null@lemmy.org 19 points 1 week ago

I gained this unwanted knowledge involuntarily, but am more cultured for it.

[–] Sunsofold@lemmings.world 16 points 1 week ago

I love the idea of someone expecting to be booped with a camera so they insert a thin glass vial filled with fake blood in their suit nose, so when someone boops them, they can grab their suit nose and go, 'Aaagh! My node! You broge by node!' as they seemingly get a bloody nose.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This would be iterative engineering design.

[–] quoll@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 week ago

lamarck has entered the chat

They are truly knights of the new era

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Pretty sure the nose on mine might not withstand repeated boops, but depends on what they're made out of. Someone already pointed out something to the extent of how there is more choice in what material is used to make the suit. So, kinda depends on material used.

I'm pretty sure I've seen in the past at least a few suits on the more expensive side using actual hard, boop resistant, materials for the nose. Couldn't tell you the material since I'm not an expert.

Edit: more about 3D printed suit bases instead of just more materials. Whoops.

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