Circus Seat wagon with Vinyl Figures - Children Revisited

Last August I posted the original about my find of inexpensive vinyl figures that I thought would work as children.  I have a need for a large number of seated figures to use as the circus grandstand crowd.




I was in the process of building a circus seat wagon which is finally finished. Below it is in the process of unfolding from the shipping position on the railroad flat car.





Here it is all set up and ready for the crowd.





After the holidays I finally got a start on modifying the figures.





As a demonstration I lined up the 5 figures above to illustrate some of the modifications.  The original is on the left.  The second figure shows how I started by cutting  the leg to convert to a seated position.
By only bending one leg I got a figure that is walking up the steps.  The last 2 have been converted to a seated position and the one on the right has the arm bent to change the look.





Here are the girls trying out the stands.

Next I worked on some vendors.



Above are two original figures and sculpy modifications next to them.  The containers hide the jointed legs.

After cutting and gluing many legs to convert the figures to sitting positions I started seating them to get an idea of the effect.




The next picture shows where I stand on completing the crowd.  /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/blush.gif



I have done a bunch of experimenting along the way to improve the process of converting the figures to a seated position.  I have stopped cutting with a saw and started using a dremmel tool with a pointed grinder to notch the back of the knees about 80% of the way through from the back.  That leaves a section which helps hold the legs in position as they are glued.  It also produces a rounded knee rather than a pointed knee which has to be rounded off later.  I started using 5 minute epoxy to reattach the legs.  Now I use thick CA and an accelerant.

Last night while holding a figure to glue the legs, I forced the figure into a back bend position. This started me thinking about circus performers /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/whistling.gif and -  presto - a new circus act came into being.  Auditions are now under way.  Here they are practicing.   Sculpy modifications and painting are scheduled for later.



There appears to be room for approximately 120 seated people in the stands.  Thus far I have converted only 50 to a seated position.  I have some other ideas for micro scenes within the stands.  So many ideas and so little time!

Bob