Half Tail ideas?

[Merman Orion]

So I was on DeviantArt earlier and I discovered these pictures and I instantly fell in love with them. In these pictures the merman/siren/whatever you want to call him doesn't have a full tail. He has like a fin that runs up turning into legs almost at the ankles and I was wondering if anybody had any ideas on how to accomplish this in real life. The fluke part seems easy. You would just get a mono fin and make your standard fluke mold but for the whole I almost have two legs kind of look has stumped me. Any ideas?
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[Starfrit]

I think there are two ways you could do this; one would be to go the "Movie Prosthetic" route, making the prosthetic bottom-half of the tail, and using a translucent or skintone-matching sort of gradient for the areas that begin to transition into the legs, and adhering them to the legs with spirit gum like you would other costume prosthetics like ears, gills, etc. (Though I'll admit I don't know what would work for that purpose that wouldn't react/weaken in water and chlorine, or tear the skin off your legs from the weight of the fluke and monofin, or the force of the dolphin-kick.)

You could also try a painted leggings and silicone combo, paint the leggings to look like bare legs and then form and adhere the half-tail to that. You get the fused-lower-legs look, and it's easier to put on and take off.

Not sure how well either one could work, there's probably a huge list of pros and come for both, but those were the first two ideas to come to mind.

[Coradion]

I made foot fins, kinda similar. I can make them with scales to the knee too. Could fuse them if you really wanted,

https://40.media.tumblr.com/04334c178a29ce45c0969a347b6e0d44/tumblr_n4vh8kiaVK1seod7xo1_500.jpg

[Slee]

That's fabulous. I think I would probably try to do that with something like a flesh tone performance mesh lightly coated in silicone that go on like socks/pants and come up to midcalf, to which i added color as i went down, and then fused the two about halfway down the calves into a single tail between the split section and the fluke.