WikiFur:Project Fursuit Central

Fursuit Central is a WikiFur community project to greatly expand the amount of information about fursuit materials, systems, processes, and techniques available to WikiFur readers and contributors. The "Fursuit Central" project aims to provide a collection of articles and user "how to"s to help new fursuit builders avoid costly and frustrating mistakes while also providing a resource for experienced builders who would like to explore new or more advanced techniques for fursuit construction.

=Proposed article organization= In general articles on fursuit construction, materials and techniques should follow a common format so it is easier for a person who is inexperienced or unfamiliar with a material or technique to understand and implement that technique.

Suit components
Suit components should have comprehensively described functionality. Different subtypes of suit components should have their own subsection describing how they accomplish the function or are constructed. Ideally a picture of each subtype will be linked so a visual example of the differences will be apparent (if possible the images should be isomorphic views shot on an evenly lit solid background).

Construction technique overviews
Articles regarding body part (e.g. hand, head, foot, etc.) construction techniques will be categorized by anatomical location from the top of the head to the toes. Articles for subparts (e.g. hand claws) will be categorized in a hierarchical manner. Articles regarding construction techniques for objects not typically found attached to fursuits (i.e. props) will be categorized by function and then alphabetically.

Material suppliers and product reviews
Materials suppliers will be listed in separate articles titled with the supplier's name. Product reviews should be linked from User: space. User space material review URLs should preferably be of the form "User:username/Review/SupplierOrManufacturer/material".

User how-tos
In general, multipart How-tos should be composed of multiple pages in User: space. These pages are recommended to be of the form "User:username/HowTo/howtoName/part". Each How-to sub-article page should regard a specific body part. Each sub-article page should contain a link to the previous step and next step in the how-to (in the style of wikibooks). "User:username/HowTo/howtoName" will contain an overview of the how-to. Links from construction technique overviews should be to the "howto" part sub-article regarding that specific technique.

=Proposed templates and infoboxes= The templates and infoboxes would simplify the construction of fursuit based articles and would allow greater consistency across pages.

User How-tos

 * Name of how-to
 * Picture of finished article

Body part construction techniques

 * Name of how-to referenced
 * Picture of finished article

Complete Fursuit

 * Picture of suit (Preferably first head perspective, then head front, then head side, then side view whole body, then front view whole body)
 * Name of player or character (links to user space page or character wiki page)
 * Link to suit how to (if exists)
 * Name of builder (company (such as MixedCandy, etc.) or person)

Material

 * Picture of material
 * Name of material (canonical, generic)
 * Manufacturer of material

"How to" multipage heading
A heading linking to the main "how to" page and to the next and last steps of the how to.

Suit component location schematic template
A template to assemble suit location schematics (see schematics and images/suit component location schematics for image description) for easy article insertion. This template should use parameters to determine which component location to shade or color.

=Schematics and images=

In user how-tos
As a general rule use as many images as possible to illustrate your steps and points. Please consider creating schematics to go along with your photographs.

Schematic or Image?
Typically schematics are used to illustrate a step and photographs are used to indicate a finished product. However, photographs may be used to illustrate how the object should appear after the schematic step has been completed to assist the reader in interpreting the schematic.

Suit component location schematics
A group of images that highlights component locations on suit to give a better overall view of component function/placement. Will be in the form of a template that can be applied to a page to illustrate where something should go on the finished suit.

=Fursuit Central Portal Page=

The fursuit central portal is a central "jumping off" point for all fursuit information on WikiFur. The portal is divided into the functional sections below.

What is bar
This header provides links to general information about fursuits for the user who is not familiar with fursuits.

New HowTos
This box provides an area for showcasing new user created how-tos.

Main content
An area listing major categories for fursuit central as well as top-level articles in the categories: HowTos, Techniques, Materials, Performance, Repair/Maintenance, Suit Components, etc.

Featured HowTo
This area will feature an exception fursuit how-to. Like the featured suit section this space will be rotated as needed depending on the quantity of applicable material.

Featured Suit
This area will feature an exceptional suit description or description with tutorial. This space will be rotated as needed - most likely on a week to week basis - depending on the quantity of applicable material.