So I had a great and terrible desire for these artist’s models and although I don’t really draw enough to justify them, it so happened that my great and terrible desire aligned with the Irish date for Mother’s Day, so Ted got ’em for me as a mother’s day gift.

They arrived yesterday (just in time for American Mother’s Day!) and I just spent an hour or more fiddling with them.

Conceptually they’re pretty damn terrific. The articulation is as good as it looks. They have nifty little boxes for all the extra hands and weapons and stuff so you don’t lose them, which is very handy. The boxes also double as a base for the yokes that hold them, so it’s a well thought out design for all of that.

However.

I don’t know if the female figure I got is actually defective or just considerably more poorly made than the male figure. It is, without question, more poorly made: the knees, which are probably equally well articulated, are also covered with a single piece from the hip to the kneecap. Presumably this was done to make it Prettier. Well, it’s not prettier, but it does make the knees tend to twist inward, and the thing is I’m afraid that knock-kneed aspect is intended to be a deliberate feature. I knew when I ordered them the female figure had thigh gap, but I figured I could work with that. The knock-knee-endess, though, is just not cool.

All of her joints are looser, too, making it more difficult to fix her in a pose than the male figure. Again, I can’t tell if this is deliberate or if I’ve got a defective figure, but if it’s purposeful it’s a terrible design choice.

But to make up for those flaws, the small hole in her back where you’re supposed to be able to fix her onto the yoke…is mis-shapen. I can’t get the peg in far enough for the yoke’s most basic mode to work for her at all. As you can see, on the male figure it’s a good round hole, but on the female, it’s an oval. And the yoke pegs are not ovals. So that’s a real pain in the ass, and I don’t know if it’s that mine is actually defective or if the smaller waist/rib size has made a hash out of the support hole because they don’t care enough to have done it right. I’ll be contacting them to find out.

And then there’s the yokes themselves.

First off, the kit does not come with a screwdriver, which I found necessary to tighten up the yokes for both figures enough to hold them in place. Despite my best efforts, though, it was still not entirely successful, and elevating them at any kind of angle besides Straight Up is basically impossible; they simply fall. (Their product page demonstrates how it’s supposed to be able to work, but mine do not work that way.)

There are two kinds of yokes, as shown in the picture below. One is Y-shaped and holds the figure on 3 points; the female figure is being held by that one. The male figure is being held by the 2 point yoke, because his 3 point yoke just falls off the strut it’s meant to fix snugly onto. It required a pair of pliers to get the arms onto the 2-point yoke (there’s only one pair of arms, interchangeable between the 2 and 3 point stems).

The straight, unadulterated stem (to which both the yokes attach) works nicely on the male figure (except the strut’s balance is questionable), but, again, doesn’t fit into the female figure’s mis-shapen spine hole. This picture has her balanced precariously on the stem, but if I move her even a millimeter that’s all she wrote.

I would say that between the two sets I have almost one wholly functioning yoke, which is slightly less than half as many as I might expect.

So. It’s a mixed bag. I love the figures but am disappointed with many aspects of the quality, and will be contacting the vendors to see if they can provide me with, you know. Things that work better.