Waisted Hips

[Casperger]

Okay yes, firstly I'm bad with play-on-words.

 

But now that that's out of the way, the topic! So, I've just about finished my... maybe first?... MOC trying to use the Hero Factory building style, focusing on ball and socket as much as I can. (You'd have no idea how hard of a time I'm still have switching from Bionicle) But I'm not sure if I'm just bad at building with Hero Factory parts, or if others have this problem too.

 

So what I'm getting at is that there isn't a piece for the waist/hips/crotch. Multiple times now, I have been able to build decent upper bodies, but when it comes to the waist... Nothing. What I mean is, look at Toxic Reapa. He has a custom torso, but his hips are bare and look... unfinished. It seems that there are no parts that can be used even somewhat easily to help fill out the waist properly. It looks like the only way to do that on smaller builds is to use a Hero body/chest cover.

 

It just... It baffles me because I've never been so stuck trying to build an MOC. And it's the same issue on multiple builds. I've even tried to look around and see what others have done, but I can't find anything that fills out the waist on a Hero skeleton body. Why hasn't there been a piece like that so far? I mean, there's an available ball joint(?) right there. But even the villains use the same Hero chests.

 

I'm sorry for rambling. It just... confuzzles me to no end! I guess what I'm trying to say is, what have you been able to come up with, and why Lego hasn't made such a piece? Or even just your thoughts and opinions.

 

Okay, I'm done... for now.

[Aanchir]

There are a number of solutions I've experimented with, and I've found some quite nice ones that I have yet to post. Generally it's not too difficult unless you want to incorporate waist articulation as well, in which case it becomes quite a chore. I sincerely hope that sometime soon TLG releases an armor piece that is ideally-suited for armor on the "crotch" of a MOC-- the new Furno XL set demonstrates just how badly such a part is needed.Some of my solutions can be seen here and here. A recent, slightly more imaginative, attempt, involves the use of XT4's 5x6 torso beam in tandem with a standard Hero-sized torso beam, but I don't have any good pics of that MOC yet and haven't been able to get it to fit together quite as elegantly on LEGO Digital Designer. Really there are a number of ways you can get nice, streamlined-looking armor over the crotch and hips of a Hero Factory MOC-- you just can't limit yourself to the building styles that appear in sets, even if you stick to basic Hero Factory and Technic elements.

[Studs Not On Top]

This is starting to bug me, too. What you've got, Aanchir, looks really good, and could work for most sets. I suggest building some upper body armor and attaching the shortest limb joint (angled up) on the crotch ball. From here you've got an exposed ball to work with; it at least hides that torso gap.