Jointing Mo betta joints

Last weekend I was at a doll meet and I took the opertunity to pull at all the dollys arms and legs and peek at their joints. The Angel Region dolls in particular interested me. Their joints are super awesome at both shifting poses smoothly and holding poses. At the time I sketched it out on a bit of cardboard but now I've Illustratored it up and made it beautiful to share my discovery.

See that the knees and elbows are not round, but rather egg-shaped. That makes it so that the doll can keep it's knees straight for standing without all the floppiness of perfect round joints. And because the joints are still smooth, rather than having a little ledge on them like SD knees to hold a pose, they can change between positions very fluidly. Overall, it makes for much better posing than a Volks doll and it's such a simple modification. I am definately going to try out the egg-shape on my next doll.

The ankles are not really different from most dolls, just having the hollow cap over a hook, but they had a little bit of a protrusion in the front so that they locked into place a little better. It's loose so that they're easy enough to get out (if you turn them up side down and streatch out some space for them, they'll just fall out) but it keeps them from turning around in the sockets.
The wrists were what I particularly liked. They had the little concave on both the end of the forearm and the hand, and then in between, there was just a large pony-bead shape. It posed as well as anything there but it was so much simpler than anything else, both for stringing and for just making in the first place. The hole in the middle was large enough that it didn't get in the way of the inner hook at all, they just slid very smoothly.
So here's my diagrams, I hope they help somebody figure out mechanics a bit better.

 

I am not doing torso joints for my dolls because I've decided to choose aesthetics over posability in that regard, but I do know how they work. Before I could get my hands on a 'proper' ball jointed doll, I did study the momoko types and the posable Barbies from the mid 90s.

She has a circular waist joint that not only allows her to lean forward and back on it, it also allows her to spin around on the waist joint. Stand up, put your hands on your hips and try to turn the the side without moving your legs. Actual humans can not really twist very much at the waist. And thus you do not need waist-twisting and that is goint to make this a lot easier.

There are two kinds, most dolls have either a chest joint or a waist joint, but some (like SD16 and Hound and others) have both, although this tends to give you a very floppy doll unless you put in mechanisms to keep their backs straight.

With a chest joint, the stomach piece generally slips inside of the chest piece. Most of the dolls have a ledge on the inner piece that the outter piece sits on top of and they meet up with a reletively flush look, but can be popped off the ledge a little to pose the doll in a slouch, or leaned back.

For a waist joint, generally the stomach piece slips inside of the hip piece. The pieces again have a bit of a ledge or catch for them to sit neatly on but can similarly be put into a slouch or lean. For dolls with just one of these joints, it's mainly a matter of personal prefference, they both provide a similar ammount of movement. For dolls with both of these, they are signifigantly more flexible but also more difficult to make stand up.

Hope this helps.

 

No problem. I do diagraming to help figure out stuff myself, so it's easy to just turn around and post it up here.