Hey everybody it's Norm from tested and for today's show and tell I want to talk to you
about action figures, specifically about
one feature of action figures that
figures in general that are really important for
uhh collectors and for toy photographers
and that's points of articulation
I have here some figures from a new company
Based out of New York, they're called Art Bones and they reached out
To let me know that they're developing these two
- these two designers - their own line of these
twelfth-scale, six inch-tall figures that they're not
only designing from scratch
but they're manufacturing themselves using
resin 3D printers in New York
and doing small-batch manufacturing which really
pique my interest and it gave me a chance to not only check them out
but let's talk about what can make these interesting and how these
might compare to one of the figures when you're shopping around
for opposable figures to take pictures of or just even
to play with. So when I was buying figures like back in the
80's and the 90's, even early thousands, (you know)
I'd buy something in a toy store or I'd buy something online when I get it
the first thing I want to do is (you know) pose it
in a certain way, find a way to display it on my shelf, or take a picture of it
and something I always noticed is that no matter how
much I the figure around
the arms, the elbows, the legs and
all the accessories around sometimes the poses never
felt really natural and that's because
that
toy is made of plastic, or metal or what-ever
they're made of they don't always have the same
(like) mobility, the points of articulation that a human
naturally would we have so many
we're very dexterous creatures. From our fingers to our elbows
like we can contort our body in all sorts of different ways
and even when we're standing still
or holding a resting pose, you know
that's very different leaning one way then the other way.
and so for a figure to have
all those points of articulation requires a lot of
engineering. And that's why people look for
and that's why people look for things like (you know) double-hinge joints on
the legs or the elbows you can actually
bend the legs. Well, the folks at ArtBones
They told me they designed the armoured shirt
the skeleton their figure from scratch
and they actually will send one of these here
that lets me show you exactly what we're talking about
when we're talking about articulation. Now there are a couple
different types of basic joints you might find in a figure.
There is your ball and socket
which you might find right here in the elbow, in fact, there is like a
I think it is called a dumbbell joint where you have two ball and sockets
that allows not only for you to move
your arm here but in two places
so you can actually get the arm to wrap around
the front of your chest, same with the elbow here
you have a double-hinged joint. If it was a single-hinged joint
you can bend in just this one axis, but the fact
that it is a double-hinged joint, you can then fold
that forearm all the way around
and do something that looks much more natural
of course, our bodies don't have two hinges at the elbow
but we can still bend here because we're not made of plastic, we're
flesh and we can compress our muscles. There
are no muscles here to compress, it's just that plastic
you also have things like pivot joints
on the bottom, swivel joints here
it's a combination of like swivel and (um) hinge
at your feet and then
of course things like a torso, an ab crunch is
a very important thing as well which is kind of like a hinge joint
and the way that the other had ab crunch on this figure
is really interesting because not only does it let you compress here you can actually pull up
get a little bit of travel here which then
allows for a bigger compression. Yeah
with all these joints combined this figure has
37 points of articulation. That's
a pretty good amount of flexibility so this is fascinating
and I love that this was all designed
not only in their studio but it was also manufactured
in their studio as well. These
are all 3D printed pieces there is no injection
moulded tooling that they made they are making this on-demand
as people order these and something
to help with the durability of this, they told me, is
this idea of having this rubber O ring you see
that black ring right here along these joins that's
where the points of contact are so you're not constantly rubbing
the resin off and having the pieces pop off
and because they're doing these basically made to order
and because they're doing it all in the design house they have a ton of variety
of faces of hands
that ship with these on top of this armoured shirt
of course, different varients they have this exposed
muscle version which I really love a bunch of different heads,
swappable hands and
I just
I'm having so much fun just posing these
figures of like looking like almost like yoga poses
and figuring out how much can I contort
this figurine it's
something that I was never ever able to do with
the toys I had growing up or even some of the high-end toys I'm
I'm paying for and buying off of the shelf right now this is just
really, really impressive.
the one thing I do wish it had was I
wish it had maybe some more
cut-joints here where like for example some
toys you might be able to twist there is a cut line on
the thigh or on the upper arm where
you can actually turn here you have a little bit of that right
here and also the tips of the toes
some times you also have a hinge joint also on the toes
that allow you to stand on tippy toes that's something that they didn't design
until at least the first version of these
figures. But it is, and talking to some of the toy photographers
that we've met it is something that is hugely important to them
The opposability, the points of articulation
type of engineering that's required and I love that
this ArtBones figure allows me to really
appreciate all that as toys
get more complicated as. the technology that allows
for enthusiast collectors to design their own
toys becomes possible as well
if you are someone who takes photos of toys or have
great experience some figure lines that
have great opposability and lots of points of articulation I'd love to know about them
in the comments below but I'm going to
spend the rest of this video doing some more posing