Has anyone seen the Phicen body swap? If so, do you know which body was used?
Thx
Here: amid by Bob Dylan.
Bo-Body Swap Bouillabaisse
Credit to Shane Sarte for being a pioneer in breaking down these steps. I saw his post prior to attempting this myself and found it extremely helpful. Please welcome him to the kitchen!
I'll focus mainly on the deconstruction of her outfit, as you may choose a different body than I did. Putting her suit back together is a simple reversal of these steps once you've prepared your new body.
Most of her armor and clothing are fixed via velcro, but there are a few areas where you want to exercise caution.
1) Remove front chest armor plate and jetpack. If your hands are already off, slide the gauntlets off as well
2) Detach the top and side shoulder armor plates
3) In the back there is a vertical velcro strip that allows you to remove the outer vest, it's easiest to remove by bringing the arms forward and slipping it off in that direction.
4) Remove the thigh armor plates on either side, they usually lie underneath the holsters
5) Her utility belt has TWO velcro buckles, the belt itself is composed of an outer and inner belt that are attached to one another. After undoing the outer buckle in the back do NOT attempt to remove the outer belt. You must also undo the inner velcro buckle and then remove both belts as one piece to avoid damage.
If you happen to accidentally tear the outer belt off the inner, a couple dabs of super glue should take care of it.
6) The knee guards are attached by velcro BUT that velcro pad is on an elastic band, so instead of simply pulling with uncontrolled force, use one hand to hold the elastic band down prior to using your other hand to remove the knee guard. This will avoid unnecessarily stressing the elastic band that might tear.
7) The shin guards come off the upper portion of the boots easily enough.
8) Removing the boots is a bit tricky. There is an elastic band that runs along the bottom of the sole, so you don't want to just rip the boot right off as it will tear that band. The band is too tight to slide off the boot, I tried.
What worked for me was carefully unplugging the boot from the ankle peg, and only then, pulling it out towards the heel side so as to avoid stretching the elastic band.
9) With the boot removed, the upper soft goods portion slides off easily.
10) All that should be left now is the flight suit itself. There is a single vertical velcro band running over the chest and abdomen. Simply unfasten, first slide it off the shoulders.
Then, pull the arms out, I find bending the elbows while rotating the shoulders back helps. Then just slide the suit off the legs downward.
11) Lastly, there is a rather unique piece of clothing I'm calling the "neck bra." Bring the arms straight up and slide one elastic band off at a time to avoid tearing them.
When you have her completely undressed you can finally see the problems with the stock body. The elbows are single-jointed, going to about 90 degrees. The knees are also single, but can go a bit past 90. Oddly, Shane also discovered that the hips can ratchet down similar to the modern diecast suits. A hidden albeit pointless feature given her limitations elsewhere.
When choosing a body I would point out she is rather tall for a female figure (even though the actress is only 5' 6"). The neck is especially long. Longer than most of the jointed bodies I had planned on using (Pop Toys Xing series). So I had to improvise - but you may have a much easier approach if you know of an ideal body...
The tallest female body I had was an S17, which I believe is the tallest female Phicen (pic and chart included). But even then the neck was too short. That's when I committed to making an irreversible modification, so be warned.
I disarticulated the upper torso of the stock body so that the neck peg slid out from the neck. Then I cut the stock neck off to transplant it onto the Phicen. You'll have to trim some silicone off to allow for a good fit. What makes this work particularly well is that neck bra.
A bonus is that you gain some articulation at the base of the neck that was previously fixed.
Another thing to note is that the stock neck and ankle pegs are LARGE. Larger than even the metal pegs on a Phicen. So I wrapped them with some plumbers tape to thicken them up and get a good seal.
After all that, just reverse the steps to get her dressed again! The nice thing about her wrist pegs being a bit thicker than normal is that for once, the Phicen pegs fit perfectly into the stock hands.
Every body swap has an obstacle or two, but this one was fun and incorporated skills you probably already have. Give it a try and please share any shortcuts or improvements you come up with. I'm not an expert, just a guinea pig
Photos can be found on Kitbash Kitchen (Facebook) post from Dec. 22, 2022.