I made some quick and dirty knee joints for one of my Curvy Barbies today, just as a proof of concept. [I previously modded Jessyann by removing her feet and articulating her arms. For the latter, I thought about adding elbow joints by using extra ball-jointed wrist pegs, but then I found some Obitsu 27cm lower arms with Obitsu slender male hands in my raw dolls bin. Since the skin tone was an approximate match, I hacked off Curvy’s arms above the elbow and drilled out her upper arms to make sockets for the pegs of the Obitsu lower arms. I put some Aves Apoxie Sculpt in the sockets so that the Obitsu arm pegs fit by friction alone.]

To give Jessyann articulated knees, I started by cutting her legs apart. I angled the cuts so that I preserved the kneecaps in front. I started off using a hand saw, but then discovered that I could get much easier and smoother cuts by softening up the plastic in boiling water, then using a craft knife. After removing rough plastic from the cuts with some sandpaper, I made angled cuts out of the top of the calves to accommodate 90 degrees of bend. Again I cleaned the edges of the cuts.

For knee joints, I used some spare Classic GI Joe hands. I cut the hands off just above the base of the palm, then stuck the stumps into the Curvy calves. I used Instamorph plastic to fill the space and secure the stumps in their sockets. [Side note: Instamorph is a plastic with a low melting point that turns clear and pliable if stuck in boiling water for a minute. It may then be molded for projects such as this, then cooled in place till it turns opaque for a good, tight fit. It can be removed, remolded, etc., if it’s heated to clear again. It’s like a combination of quick-dry epoxy putty and hot glue, and it’s so cool!]. I also used more Instamorph plastic to fill the bottoms of the thighs and make sockets for the GI Joe wrist pegs. These allow swivel motion of the calves as well.

Proof of concept works, demonstrating that Jessyann and any other Curvies can bend their legs if you have the time and inclination to hack them up. Like most of my mods, the joints don’t look great, but they function as intended. Jessyann’s a little wobbly, but that might be because I just hacked off her ridiculously small feet and wedged her ankle stumps into shoes. Something to think about for further attempts at this body mod…