HOWTO make an animatronic lion mask with superpowers

This is not a real lion's mug but rather an animatronic lion mask with stereo night vision and amplified hearing. Want your own? Over at Instructables, Solion posted his detailed HOWTO on making the mask. Instructables co-founder Eric Wilhelm tells me that this is the first project on the site that has more than 100 steps. Solion has also made a wolf and bear using the same kind of animatronics. Dig the demo videos at the end, step #117. Wow!
Link

UPDATE: The creator of this mask was featured in the BBtv episodes American Furry part 1 and American Furry part 2!

• [j.black]

  Aw, HICCMUT, don’t be a Goofus to the proverbial Gallant. Furry is just like any other subculture – there are crazies and there are norms, and this dude, regardless of subscribing to the Furry lifestyle, is a god damned artisan. Why shouldn’t he be praised for making such an awesome object? It’s so cyborg!

• [Takuan]

  “Furries”, as some style them, are normal. Rather, all others should be categorized as “Skinnies”.

  Still an awesome Instructable.

• [Draconum]

  Here’s a few fursuit makers that I like:

  http://www.onefurall.com/

  http://www.mixedcandy.com/

  http://www.arendstudios.com/

  They’re not the same style, and definitely not as detailed as Lionel’s heavily detailed and functional suits. But believe it or not, furries do not always want the most realistic, detailed fursuit possible. Many (such as myself) would prefer them to be a cross between ‘toony’ and realistic (my favorite balance there can be found at One Fur All, linked above.)

  And @ #6: “furry enabler”? Am I missing something here? As far as I’m aware, furries arn’t any weirder than anything else on BoingBoing. You don’t call them out for being a hobo-enabler, do you?

• [Stefan Jones]

  What J.Black said. Any fetish-tang is way overwhelmed by the techno-artisan aspects.

• [Rowan Squawk Johnson]

  Dude, this is so awesome! I have recently been wearing my own hand-rafed pair of ears and a tail around school! To anyone who does not like furries, you should at least try it, it’s so liberating to be my own person.

• [subversionary]

  Yeah… I’m kinda shocked that anyone’d get weirded out by this post. I imagined the Boing Boing readership to be more progressive than that… I hope comment #6 is just a joke we’re not getting.

  Regardless- totally agreed, the artsy/ techy appeal here resounds far beyond the utility the post has to those interested specifically in an alternative lifestyle involving cosplay. As such- it’s perfect Boing! Boing! material.

• [Keneke]

  BoingBoing is repeating themselves…were they affected by the writer’s strike or what?

• [Draconum]

  “Regardless- totally agreed, the artsy/ techy appeal here resounds far beyond the utility the post has to those interested specifically in an alternative lifestyle involving cosplay. As such- it’s perfect Boing! Boing! material.”

  You got me thinking here. Typically you don’t hear much about anime or other fandom-oriented cosplaying on Boing Boing, though I’m sure it’s been covered before. Reason probably being, anime cosplay is neat and all, and it takes skill of course to create the detailed costumes, but furries (who tend to pride themselves on this above other cosplayers) are most often cosplaying original characters that are often representations of themselves. Yet at an anime con you go and find 35 people all cosplaying the same Bleach character. It’s not NEARLY as interesting (this coming from a perhaps-biased furry who does enjoy anime from time to time and has attended conventions of both types).

  Go to a furry con and you can meet a hundred new, original characters. They all have stories and personalities, unique characteristics. Are some of them creepy? Well, uh, yeah (most furs probably agree there; there is always that one guy at the con everybody kind of avoids). But many of them are most definitely not. And I think that’s true anywhere (in the world of fandom-oriented conventions).

  And thanks, Xeni. It was possibly one of the only clever things I’ve said to date!

• [Beastmouth]

  The headline had me thinking you must use superpowers to construct the thing!

• [Xeni Jardin]

  @draconum, hobo-enabler, lawl!

• [Takuan]

  WOW! Best, most comprehensive Instructable yet! A few years ago this would have been very expensive knowledge.

• [j.black]

  Hey! Isn’t the creator the same guy who was in that Furry documentary that was posted, er, here I believe? The lion obsessive!

• [CarnyTrash]

  Wow. That’s nuts. I can imagine him frolicking in the woods in the middle of the night looking for “prey” while wearing this. Yipes.

• [Draconum]

  This is the guy featured in the American Furry video, isn’t it? He’s probably one of the most detailed furry costume designers I’ve ever seen.

  Not quite my thing though, little too realistic for my tastes. :p

• [help i cant comfirm my username themelonbread]

  Not to sound bigoted, but I’m surprised that Boing Boing would be such a furry enabler.