Toy Troy - Action Figure Joint Articulation Project

Fresh off the heels of completing my sculpts of all the Community characters, I thought a fun little weekend project would be to put some action figure joints in Troy and demonstrate how they all work! I have worked on action figures before and wanted to put together a personal project to demonstrate how the articulation joints might work or bet set up on a figure.

Troy played the part of a Toy Soldier in the show Community so I thought it was very fitting to work on him :) (He was adequately called Troy Soldier) I keyed all the joints out in Zbrush and then brought them into 3Ds Max to do some of the hierarchy rigging and demonstration gifs. Hope you enjoy!

To see my sculpts of the rest of the Community cast, you can go here!
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oAJvvz

We're gonna turn Troy into an action figure!

I did all the joint creation and keying in Zbrush. Here is the final sculpt with all the action figure joints carved out. Next we'll look at them in motion!

The feet are simple Single-Disk Joints that allow the feet to move up and down. The swivel on the end of the disk also allows the feet to rotate a bit more around the ball.

How this leg is assembled

The ball is part of the lower leg which means this foot can not rotate left and right, just up and down

The knee joint prevents the legs from pushing too far forward but two points of rotation allows for the leg to reach far back

Close up of the leg rotation around the knee joint

How the knee joint is assembled.

The knee is made up of a double pin joint allowing separate movement of the upper and lower leg

Back of the knee joint

This is a double barbell hip joint that allows the leg to rotate forward, back (as far as the back side allows) and sideways.

The thigh pieces contain a flat plate joint that allows the leg to swivel left and right. Also, you can see the how the hip joint is assembled here

The thighs are actually split in two so that they can be fused around the ball on the double barbell. There are also interior keys that help it stay locked together

The shoulder is a single disk joint that allows the whole arm to move up and down and to also rotate around.

Showing the assembly of the single disk joint in the shoulder

Similarly, the rest of the arm is made up of several more single disk joints. The elbow is covered in the back to prevent over-extending the arm backwards in an unnatural way

Showing the assembly of the forearm and hands

The head makes use of a ball-disk joint allowing it to nod up and down and to rotate left and right. Normally this would allow 360 degree range of motion however the hoodie limits this.

Showing how the ball disk joint on the head is assembled.

The torso is using a single barbell rocker joint that allows for spinning, side to side and front to back motion. He could twist further than is shown here as the target range of motion is 360 degrees

Showing the assembly of the single barbell joint in the torso

Showing the interior of the legs

Interior of the torso and the arm. The torso has a tapered cylinder inside to allow the range of motion on the upper chest piece.

Showing the interior of the neck and head.