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Delartful Bears May 6, 2006

Hi Everyone,

I am wondering if someone could tell me how artists get their bears feat to point outwards?  I thought it may have been done by loosely jointing the bears legs - so I tried that when I had wobble jointed all 5 joints - it worked kind of, but not as well as I thought.

Any ideas?  I just love the way it looks on antique style bears. 

Thanks!
Danni

Daphne May 6, 2006

Attach the leg as far down on the side of the body as you can. The bottom of your disc should come almost even with the bottom of the body. This is the easiest way. The rounder the lower part of the sides of the body are the more the legs will point out. Oh, and not only mounting the legs at the very bottom of the body but also a bit further back on the body might also help.

Then there are stuffing techniques - molding as you go.

Last thing I can think of is your foot pad... make it shaped so that there is indeed a right and a left foot, this can sometimes help too.

There are more techniques, I'm sure.......

Koala May 7, 2006

I place the legs more to the back of the body when I want to achieve this effect. If you place them LOWER on the body you may end up with feet that hang together.
Hope this is a help.
Susan

vkallum May 7, 2006

Hi Danni

I posted this question on another board a while back - I lurked there too :redface: !  Thanks to the girls there I now use a combination of weighting the feet with shot in little sealed bags, joint position and the angle of the body dart. 

First of all you'll need to make the dart at the bottom of the body pattern quite wide at 90 degrees and start the angle at the top of where your joint will be, so it will be a deeper dart than normal.  On a two piece pattern it's quite straight forward, just measure 90 degrees.  On a four piece, sketch in a continuation of your side seam and then just measure round 45 degrees.  (For the feet to turn out when the bear is sitting down the joints need to be angled not straight on the side of the body).  The deeper dart might eat into the length of the body from armpit to  hip so you'll need to adjust that accordingly.

The joint mark will now be on the angled seam that goes down to his bottom instead of on the side of his body.  Hopefully when you attach the legs they will hang straight when standing (especially with a little weight), but as you sit him down the angle of the joint will twist the leg outwards and the tops of his legs will tuck under the body.

Hope this makes sense  - I've probably typed this half a dozen times and this is the best I could come up with!! :redface:

jenny May 7, 2006

I find that if I do a more bent leg...ie with a 'knee' then it swings the feet out a little...and the placement of the joint slightly nearer the back might  help....the only thing there is that the legs could end up very wide apart

But Vicky...that's a great tip about the darts....logical really but I don't always think about obvious ways of doing things....so thanks for that!!!!

Shelli Retired Help Advisor, Banner SponsorMay 7, 2006

I've generally placed the disk/joint further back from midline and closer to the "spine" to get this effect.  Also, for an extreme outward toe point -- for my ballerina bear PIROUETTE, whom I wanted to showcase in a traditional toes-out pose -- I actually gave her huge feet which I wired, starting at her hip joint, and running all the way to mid foot.  This allowed me to really tweak those feet out, without losing a lot of balance.

Hope this helps!