Making Talos Awakes: Leg construction

Making Talos Awakes – Part 12 of 20

It had been possible to bend or rotate the joints described in the previous post (the neck, shoulders and right ankle). However, it soon became clear that the 90° plus angles of the knees and elbows would be impossible to achieve by heat bending alone. Consequently an amount of cutting and splicing was inevitable.

Knee construction

First, I cut upper and lower leg sections from donor casts. Then excised the areas necessary to fit the leg halves into the correct flexed positions. Where the underside of the thighs met the calf muscles, I gently heated and rolled the edges into credible forms based on film footage. Then I adjusted the top muscle of the right thigh to achieve the convex curve seen in the kneeling Talos Awakes pose.

The armature glued into the left leg and the left foot attached

Fitting the kneecaps

I then removed the kneecap areas from previously heat-bent sections and fitted them into the new legs. I made additional small transplants to adjust the form of both knees to their new flexed positions.

The left knee was more complex than the right, as it needed to ground the figure at the correct angle. I didn’t fit the left foot at this stage, as the angle of the thigh would determine its position. I would only know the angle of the thigh after I had assembled the hips.

The constructed left leg with heat-bent kneecap but without the left foot

Building the lower body armature

The model needed to be moulded and cast in two halves. So I would need to build the resin master to split at the waist. I felt the best approach was to fabricate a small steel armature with leg bars welded around a central piece of 20mm box section (below). I made a close fitting male connector to drop into the box section (below right). Once prepared, I would weld the upper body armature to this connector.

Constructing the hips

After adding steel spacers for a secure fit, I glued the leg armature into the right leg (above). I then bolted the leg down with a concealed nut glued into the underside of the right foot.

Next, I carefully positioned the left leg using measurements taken from the wax maquette and film footage. Then I glued the armature into the left leg (right).

Finally I attached the left foot (below), which proved a far more significant challenge than the right.

The armature glued into the left leg and the left foot attached

The tricky left foot

The left foot involved far more work than the relatively simple right foot. I had to heat-bend the ankle into a fully flexed position . Also the toes needed to ground the figure in a credible manner.

I found I had to make multiple transplants to correct stretching of the front ankle straps and distortion of the ankle bones. Both faults were caused by the heat-bending process.

On the compression side of the joint, I reformed the straps into a credible shape around the back of the ankle.

The constructed and attached left foot with multiple corrective grafts

Sandal sole texture and toe adjustments

As Talos was 3D scanned standing up, all detail was missing from the underside of the left foot. To reinstate suitable texture, I cut a graft from the right thigh. This was the only area of consistent texture large enough to cover the sandal sole.

On attaching the foot, I heated and curved up the toes and sole where they made contact with the floor to give an impression of deflection under pressure.

I then adjusted the profile of the sole (as it had been completely flat), reformed the shape of the sole graft to match, cut a recess to accept the graft before setting it and filing the surface back a little to give the impression of wear.

The un-textured sandal sole next to the textured sandal sole graft identified on right thigh of a donor cast | The recessed sandal sole graft set into the adjusted profile of the left foot sandal sole

A graft to correct an indent in the outside top of the left foot and sandal strap