The bodysuit entailed a number of construction challenges, not the least of which was... the tail! I wanted a tail in proper proportion for a rat, which meant it needed to be about five feet long. I decided that the tail would hang limp, mostly because I was not prepared to deal with a complex internal support problem on my first 'suit. Yet I wanted to tail to be strong enough that it wouldn't be damaged or disconnected if it got snagged or pulled.
To accomplish this, I used rock-climbing webbing in the tail. The webbing is a lightweight nylon weave that has almost no stretch (lengthwise), yet supports more than my bodyweight on a half-inch-wide strip. Good stuff! I sewed some of this webbing down the length of the tail's underseam and then made a harness from some wider pieces of webbing that I could wear around my waist, under the costume's bodysuit.
The tail was constructed of rings of felt sewn inside one another. I stitched a thin strip of dark brown shag fur into each seam, thus creating the appearance of hairs between the tail's rings. To give the tail a more realistic appearance, the felt segments were given an airbrushed gradient of dirty brown. This kept the felt from appearing too artificially pink.
The bodysuit was built on top of a modified dancer's unitard. Carved foam pads were glued to the unitard in select places; the fur was then glued onto the top of the foam and unitard combination. Since most fur materials are static (i.e. they do not stretch), the foam also added flexibility to the costume. In fursuits, a perpetual problem occurs at major joints. If the fur is loose enough to allow full flexibility, the costume material bunches; if the fur is tight enough to remain taught, movement is greatly restricted. (The is often particularly noticable in the legs of sewn suit costumes.) However, the foam layer significantly reduces this problem in bodysuit costumes. As the joint flexes and the material is pulled, the foam compresses inwards; when the joint is relaxed, the foam expands to take up the slack in the fur material.
Additionally, foam was used to alter the shape of the Widge suit. After all, the goal was to create a rat rather than a human! So significant padding was added in the shoulders, legs, and rump to alter the proportions of the body. The largest and most complex foam pieces are in the rear, where the tail attaches; in this costume, the tail hangs directly below a large foam piece which flutes the spine outwards. The carved foam pieces (approximately twenty of them) were attached directly to the unitard using hot glue. The glue pressed into the lycra of the undersuit and the absorbant surface of the foam, creating a tight bond.
For extra security, I later sewed the edges of the fur pieces with a flat stitch. In areas without foam, the fur is also sewn to the lycra. Overall, this has proved very successful; the only maintenance has been the occassional replacement of a broken seam.
You can see above a 3/4 rear view of the finished bodysuit. This shows how the padding and shaping worked out; you can also see the tail. Foam buildup was used to allow the tail to hang down behind my rump, an approximation of the physiologically correct position for a rodent's tail. The curvature of the spine is roughly accurate for a rat, assuming you applied the vertical orientation of the human skeleton to a rat (those of you who made it through those sentences deserve some type of semantic trophy!) Whatever the rationalization, I think it looks good.
Finally, this picture shows how the white fur coloration proceeds, as an inset, into the upper thigh. The thigh was widened by foam padding, to better approximate the thick haunch of a rat; the white fur was then extended from the neck, through the crotch, and onto the inside of the thigh to mimick the coloration common in wild rats.
