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Unlike previous suits, the body of Onyx would be simple spandex, not covered by fur or clothing like Xodiac or Marian. I am not fat, but I can hardly claim to have a body that suits spandex well. Thus, I wanted to fake things a little by making a muscle suit. This is simple foam padding that emulates musculature, worn beneath the actual costume. I made a few patterns on a spandex leotard, and used those to size and cut out pieces of batting matterial. This was glued to a canvas-like material called "duck cloth" (and no, I don't know why it's called that).

As always, you can click on the pictures to get a larger view.

Here you can see the two layers of padding along with the yellow duck cloth. Unseen is the plastic needlepoint mesh that I placed between the padding and the back side of the suit. I did this to stiffen the one side; without it the seams would compact the batting symetrically. This would essentially require double the padding, which in turn would be impossible to sew through, at least with the machine I have available. With the mesh backing, one side would be very stiff and not get indented much by the seams, forcing the other to indent deeper. As it is, there is two layers for most of these "muscles", and sewing those narrow, deep valleys was a very difficult task.

This is the muscle suit with the second side, the front side, of duck fabric partially sewn in place. I sewed the horizontal seams first, making the fabric as tight as I could manage; once that was done I was able to pencil out the actual border of the fabric and sew the edge shut, folding as necessary. The biggest problem here was folding the edge under so there's not the raw cut fabric edge showing. I had to do this seam while the fabric was already attached, and that made it... awkward, shall we say.

These pictures show how the muscle suit turned out. Not too bad, I think; with the proper painting on the spandex to emphasize the shadows and highlights, it should look very good indeed. The white straps are simple elastic that I sewed in. There are no catches or hooks to show beneath the spandex, though it is thicker in some places. But those places will be underneath the wings. I purposely made this muscle suit seperate from the costume, rather than sewing or gluing the appropriate padding to the spandex itself. This way the muscle suit can be used with other costumes, should I want it.