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gi-joe hip replacement tutorial (strait torso)

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spudafett:
Ok per doc's request I'm putting up a tutorial on how to do a gi-joe hip replacement on star wars figs. I will try and explain the process as thoroughly as possible with the few wip pictures I have, sorry if it gets confusing.  Any questions anyone has on this I will try to answer.  I will also be trying to get more pictures as soon as I can afford making another figure like this....

 This process was born out of my want for more posable star wars figures and my discovery of the 25th aniversary articulation and body construction.  this is a labor intensive process and you will need several things to get started:

A small diameter plastic rod.  The plastic framing which holds together models works realy well.

You MUST have a dremel with a cutting wheel

either a drill bit for your dremel or a seperate cordless power drill
  -- I have gotten where I realy like using my power drill at a low speed setting for drilling holes in the soft plastic of figures, I have a better control of the drill bit with the slower speed and I can use my finger to guide the piece over the drill bit without fear of driling a hole through my finger with the high speed dremel.... :P

You realy do need to plan ahead on the figures you want to use for this.  Decide on what star wars figure you'd like to super articulate first and go from there:

I picked a standard legacy/votc boba fett figure. (this is sadly the only figure I have wip pics for too :( )
this is what the figure looked like originally:


The gi-joe figure I used for the donor parts was a gi-joe snow viper:


I picked this figure because it's thigh's have similar pouches sculpted on as boba's jump suit has. 

The first thing that needs to be done is to pop open the chest/torso of the fett figure.  I do this by starting out at the bottom and slowly (and very carefully) cutting into the side with an exacto knife.  Work slowly and alternate with each side untill the torso opens up enough to pull out the legs at the waist joint.  There is no need to completely split the body in two but if you do it's fine.

at this point you need to keep all parts of the boba fett figure as we will use them all except for the thighs. 

Move on to the joe fig and start taking it apart.  This is the most labor intensive portion and could get confusing.
here is a picture of the parts that will be saved:


For the figures that don't have ball joints in their torsos you don't need to worry about popping the chest apart on the gi-joe.  This is especially the case if you plan on using the gi-joe's ball jointed neck for making the boba figure have a real head and removable helmet.  This is also assuming that your not going to hit clonehead up for his custom cast necks and heads....  On this particular figure I used a gi-joe head and neck so I'm going to explain the entire process with that in mind.  The same techniques can be applied to swap out the old neck for one of clints or a stock s.w. figure's neck.

The other parts needed for the mod are the gi-joe's thighs and the screws which hold them together.  As well as the double knee joint.  These knee joints are a little dificult to remove.  I use a tiny flat head screwdriver to wedge around the tiny peg and pry the legs off the lower joint of the knee.

The next thing to do is make the new conection between the torso and the hips.  This calls for the dremel's cutting wheel.

Cut the waist of the gi-joe right through his belt area.  Use the belt as a guide and you should get a pretty strait cut around it.  Try not to cut too far below the belt as you will hit the top of the metal making up the ball joints.  Once you have the hips cut off of the joe put them to the side.

Take boba's hips and cut off the "t" peg off just below the peg itself.  you will cut through the entire hip to achieve this.  You will use this peg to attach the new waist.

here is what you should have after dremeling off these two pieces:


Notice in this picture how I have placed the double jointed knee's onto boba's lower legs?  This is what you need the drill and the plastic rods.  Take your knee joints and make sure the plastic rod you have will fit through the bottom most hole of the gi-joe knee. 

Take the boba fett legs at the knee and carefully cut the peg out.  gently push the exacto blade down on both sides of the old knee joint and remove the existing peg.  Take the gi-joe knee and fit it inside the groove from the old peg and while holding it in place drill a hole through both sides of the leg making sure your drill bit goes through the knee joint's hole as well.  Using a bit that is slightly smaller than the plastic rod is probably a good idea for this part as the plastic of the boba's leg is soft and will expand.  Push the plastic rod through the leg and cut it at a length just slightly long enough to make it all the way through.  Using the soft plastic of the model kit's framing you can take a pair of needlenose pliers and compress the rod to expand both outside ends to keep it from slipping out.    Please ask if this isn't clear enough, I hate that I didn't take pics of this part of the project....

Now, getting back to those hips and the peg joint.  You need to fit the peg joint to the new hips.  I have used just superglue with the previous ones as I had nothing else on hand but I honestly would recomend a two part epoxy for added strength here.  Make sure that the joint doesn't sit too far into the cavity of the new hips as it won't fit right if you do.  What I usually do is close the torso up around the peg itself and press the hips up to it to see how it will fit and see if any parts are going to rub.  if the parts don't match up well use a sanding drum and the dremel to trim it up.

This is how it should look once finished:


All that is left now is assembling the legs, hips and torso together.  this is what my boba's legs looked like put together:

The knee joints have small pieces of cardboard glued to them to make a more fettesque set of knee pads.

Now, assuming you want to take all this a step further and make a removable helmet boba fett then you need to dig out that Gi-joe's torso with the neck still left on it and dremel that sucker off at the shoulders.  Dremel off boba's old neck right under the ball joint.  If need be dremel out the inside of boba's neck and fit in the new neck inside the old neck.  This will give it a good "turtleneck" look.  Glue that new neck in place and you've got a neckectomy finished too. 
Here is what mine looked like afterwards:

I also took and dremeled out the original boba head to make the removable helmet.  I would suggest just buying a cast from clonehead though... SOOOO much easier! and def. worth the cost.


One last thing needs to be done to make the fig complete.  The belt needs to be cut to fit around the new hips.  With the old figure the belt fit inside the torso and around the peg.  This inner rubber of the belt needs to be shaved off with the exacto knife carefully making it more like a real belt.  Try to get it to fit over the new figure's hips carefull not to rip it.  If it is too tight heat it up in some boiling water and then stretch it slightly to get it to fit correctly. 

This should be your result:
Before the head/neck swap:


after neck swap, head swap, and paint:


Posing with his younger version (an animated boba fett version of this process)


For the animated version I used different joe parts, I believe it was the legs and hips of a Flint figure

This same process was done on an animated boba fett.  This is a comparison pic of the difference between the SA joe version and the original stock boba fett sculpt:


As you can see the joe parts do make the figure grow a bit taller.  However, especially with the boba figure, I believe that it looks more proportionate than before.  When standing side by side the old figure looks stunted.

That's all I've got.  When I get the chance I will post a similar tutorial on what to do with star wars figs that already have ball jointed torso's and how to splice on joe lower halves.

Please tell me if this was helpful and explained thoroughly enough that you guys understand what i did.

spudafett:
other figures which have recieved this same treatment:

han solo:


lando:


greedo:

Clonehead:
That was a very informative and awsome tutorial, Devon! Thanks for sharing that with us, dude!

DocOutlands:
Excellent!!  Now, if I could find a crappetonne of 25th Joes on ebay for 99 cents...  Basically, this should let me take otherwise desirable figures that were molded in the "goose-step style" (swivel shoulders and hips ONLY)  and give them some decent leg articulation?  I wonder... since you end up doing so much surgery on the SW fig's knee area... I'm wondering if a "goose-step" leg could be used if you were careful about how & where you made the cut, to use Joe thighs and SW calves.

Very interesting.  Now I have a MUCH better idea of how to look at Joes and SW figs for frankenmashing!

* DocOutlands wanders off, looking for Joes to sacrifice in the name of Knowledge and Learning...

r1bb1t:
Incredible tutorial. I know that it took a tremendous amount of time to comprise, and will be helpful to plenty of folks.
Awesome job all around, and thanks so much for sharing your knowledge.
Great tutorial.

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