I know that I am liable to get as many different ways of doing this as there are members of this site (and some will have more than 1 opinion) but I have a question for you guys & gals (we all know your here).

IF you were to design your own action figure for private use or sale. What would be the body style you would go with?

I know that we have staunch RAH fans out there, as well as the fans of the 25A / MU body styles, while others are more likely to FrankenJoe up the figure to create a custom. I am not talking making 1 single figure. I am talking about if you were to create a base figure you planned to use for several customs or have for others to use themselves for customs.

I will start off. I know that I am an old timer, but I really miss the 'back screw' that made customizing so much simpler in the old Joes.

I would love to see a new hybrid of 25A construction merged with the ease of customizing that the old RAH figures had. I am not a fan of single hinged elbows, and would love to see more ball jointed elbows as they give better range than single hinged or double hinged elbows. Ankle articulation is a must as well because it lends to better display poses.

I agree with you on the back screw. I enjoyed the ease of taking apart the old o-ring (ARAH) figures. The new style has a great range of articulation which allows for more realistic poses. There is always a problem with any action figure; if you add more articulation you loose some detail and vice versa. An action figure that would be the best would be one that has a basic body construction (no details) with multiple articulation points, screwed together, with realistic scale clothing and gear. The body would look more like a 12" figure in 4" scale. The clothing would allow for better detail and the articulation would allow for better movement.

I would go with the new sculpt articulation with swivel wrists. I like the new shoulder joints but I hate the ball joint elbows. I think the upper arm swivel introduced in 1984 is far superior. And I have grown to like the ball joint necks over RAH/newsculpt neck posts if they can just get a standard size with them. It makes having a separate helmeted head look better than having a bulky removable helmet.

_________________

It would be a very FrankenJoe design. 25th/Mu style with Build'n'Brawl articulation and proportions and a back-screw. Keep the BnB style hip joints definitely. Makes getting the legs off a doddle.

_________________

I was just talking about this, in detail.

I was in that camp of preferring my RAH to the contemporary offerings, and lately found that because of all that has been offered in this newer construction of seamless arms and legs, twisting knees, ankles, wrists, and hips, and just the overall level of details, it is an exiting time to be a customizer.

Seriously. I thought the accessories were just the cream. But lately, all of these things from Star Wars to even the ROC new sculpting, dang, I have not been this jazzed about toy purchasing in a very long time. I think drbindy here mentioned once that the epitome of articulation would be the current form of arms, legs, and head(providing they can agree to make the neck plug homogeneous and unilateral), married to a screw back torso design so we can effectively swap out the limbs without hammering, cracking, or slicing. That would be very interesting.

_________________

ARAH style figure.

Add Ball Joints to the wrists. Have a neutral, generic gripping hand pose...option for alternate and more expressive hand poses.

Make a new neck. It would look like a dumbell or peanut, fitting in to a standard ARAH (85-94) style torso. It would provide a ball to connect modern style ball jointed heads to.

_________________

Back screw
Dumbell neck like nova mentioned
No mid torso joint or ab crunch
Ball jointed shoulders
Double hinge elbows
Swivel hands
Swivel waist
Ball hips
Double hinge knees
Swivel calves
Hinge/swivel ankles

_________________

Torso: Modern Joe, but with back screw added. It would be so easy to add it, it's a crime they haven't. As an alternative, I really, really liked the torsos from the Wolverine Origins line. Great detail and playability. While they did not have the back screw, they at least had boil and pop arms. I would totally live with that as an alternative, if it was the best we got.

Arms: I think the current Joes are mostly getting this one right. Most of the poor choices made early in the 25th line have been resolved. I prefer the Joe arms over the MU arms (especially the female non-elbow arms), but the Wolverine Origins arms are just as nice as Joes.

Wrists/Hands: I can live with the swivel, but true ball joints would be cool. However, that presents an issue for customizing, as it's one more joint to paint. As it stands, I really dig the hinged wrists on some of the Star Wars clones. I'd offer that, but have at least one, if not two extra sets of hands in different poses, per figure.

Waist: as long as the torso has well done chest articulation, including the swivel, I prefer to not have the cut waist joint. sometimes too many moveable parts, in this scale, takes away from playability, and if not done well, the asthetics also.

Hips: anything but those god awful Wolverine Origins and now IM2 styled hip joints. Well...anything I guess other than swivel joints here. Star Wars needs to take this step. Just think how much money they'll make selling all the same figures again for the next 5 years with improved articulation! But I digress. Modern Joe hips are preferred. MU hips (same style, but plastic bar) is acceptable. MU AIM Soldier style is intriguing, with the extra swivel. I would use it with discretion though. If the cut joint doesn't fit in well with the sculpt, I would leave it out (as with, for example, bare legs.

Knees: I think most lines are getting these ok right now. I don't like the Star Wars type though, so I guess modern Joe and MU knees. Universal peg sizes would be a dream.

Head/Neck: No way to go other than neck ball, and I prefer the Joe sized socket over the huge Star Wars ones. Like Cap said though, universal is a must - and would be a dream if it were universal amongst all Hasbro lines. I'd also include multiple heads for each figure. Removable helmet or swappable unhelmeted head for everyone! and possibly one alt head per. This is where you use those screaming face sculpts - as the alt head, not as the only head for the figure.

If it came down to quick and dirty compromises, I'd totally live with WO styled figures (no back screw, but easy to remove arms), and Joe styled hip joints.

Having said all of this, I hope nothing so perfect comes along. I kind of prefer customizing them this way myself...

_________________

I was very leery of the 25A moob joint when it was first shown off, and them initial figs and their not-so-great range of motion at that moob didn't convince me otherwise. But, the decent range available in some of the MU and RoC figs has warmed me to it some.

However, there's simply no getting around the fact that it's frickin' U-G-L-Y-you-ain't-got-no-alibi-UGLY. It's a joint where no such joint exists in the human frame (you ever tried to fold your ribcage in half?), and makes customizing so much more difficult both for the way they're glued together instead of the beloved backscrew and because whatever chest one chooses mandates a matching torso due to the need to preserve 'shirt cohesion', which then limits one's choices for pants due to them being the same piece as the abdomen.

But, after destroying numerous such figs and others from non-Hasbro lines, I think an improvement is possible. The key is to get rid of the barball coming up off the t-bar. It's there to provide anchorage for the legs, but it's really un-necessary with a redesign of the t-bar and how it fits into the pelvis halves. The BnB wrestlers have essentially the same ball-on-a-stick-held-by-a-socket-cup hip construction, but the t-bar is held entirely within the pelvis with no need to protrude up into the abdomen.

BnBs have a cube of plastic with teeny prongs extending forwards and back for security (and indeed, I've had several Joes and MUs with wobblier t-bars than I've had such an issue with BnBs). This frees up volume that the BnBs then use to accomodate a waist swivel, which I greatly like.

However, in the interests of keeping mold costs down (the BnBs do it by reusing a small number of essentially bare bodies, but Joes have more individualized clothing, necessitating more molds), instead of a waist swivel the current moob joint can simply be lowered down to waist level. The 'contact surface hemisphere' would still protrude up unlike the RAH done protruded down; but the joint would essentially still be a ball motion joint at waist level. Additionally, moving the moob engineering down would free up the room for a backscrew, too.

Aside from that, I'm cool with the articulation philosophy Joes and MUs have for the rest of the body, except I'd prefer larger neck balls like SW figs have so the heads have a greater range of motion.

_________________

This is maybe the closest I've seen to perfect . . .

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=21733

_________________

Head/Neck: Toy Biz Marvel Legends style with a hinge/peg so figures can lie on the ground and raise their heads to aim, or bend their heads down to look down a rifle when standing. I think a couple of those WWII figures by 21st Century had them.

Torso: Tough one, but I'd probably say Hot Toys waist dumbbell.

Arms: ROC got this one down better than 25th. So did the Indiana Jones line, where the disk was shaped just right to allow just a tad over a 90 degree bend and had the shirt wrinkles sculpted on, so they looked a little better when the arms weren't bent.

Wrists: Commander Gree style cut/hinge or Halo peg/ball socket.

Hips: BnB or Hot Toys. Good range of motion and not over-complicated like the Wolverine/Iron Man hips.

Knees: 25th/MU style. Together with the hip swivels, they couple accomplish some good lying down and prone poses.

Lower legs/ankles: DCUC/MU with a shin cut and hinged ankles, or standard 25th/ROC

I prefer a back screw and leg screws myself. That being said I would go with BnB style torso, 25th style for the rest, with Marauder Inc. gear all the way! Short, sweat, and to the point, lol.

_________________

For ease of use, I also vote for the backscew solution.

And just as important, for me, is getting rid of the horrible mid-torso joint that is plaguing most modern action figures. It breaks up the figure in a very unrealistic way as soon as you turn it a millimeter to pose him. It looks unnatural in all but the standing stiff, looking straight ahead pose.

The shirt/pants divide at the waist is a much more natural solution, as our eyes are used to a dividing line there due to our style of clothes.

_________________

Who says that life can't imitate art?




Seriously, I was rethinking my feelings on the 25th design and admiring the Bazooka I just picked up at Family Dollar when I started posing him and I remembered why I wouldn't like them if I was a kid that was expected to play with them. He looked perfectly awesome all geared up and facing forward but as soon I posed him any other way he looked silly. Lower the joint to the waist and add the back screw and I would be all for the downfall of the O-ring design. One big drawback of the o-ring is the elasticity of it doesn't allow the twisted at the waist pose to be maintained but I'll take that over separated shirts.

_________________