Hello,

I have a figure who's arms currently in an award position, he came with an old half track and had his hand on the rail. But in my diorama I want him to look like he is talking to another soldier, and smoking a cigarette with his one hand. I am fairly new to figures and I am looking for advice on how to manipulate figure limbs

Matt, check out Jerry Rutman's blogs here on the site....he's one of the best figure guys I know.

Do you know of any titles in particular? He has over 800 started topics

I'll echo what Dave suggested - look for anything by Jerry Rutman in the dio section - in fact, he has one there now called Get to the Elbe - LOTS of figures - each remarkable! In this post he provides a great step by step that is very informative - check it out -

Cheers
Nick

You can try putting a tiny bit of blue tack in the arm sockets so you can move them into the place you want then glue the seam around the shoulder . Just one idea.

Got to agree with the others - Jerry is one of the best figure animators out there.

Hi Matthew...., I remember when I first started out, all my guys were built straight from the instructions, and altering even someone's hat scared me to death....
What I do now is go through the 'spare parts' of any old figures I've got, although everything is still 1/35 scale, arms, hands etc... can still be different sizes. Then maybe using clay or putty, alter the direction you want the arm to go in, shaving some plastic off if necessary, and filling the gap, sand off any excess & you should have a decent alteration.....? It's worked ok for me in the past.
There are some guys here who are real artists, can build a figure from scratch & you'd never know the difference..... Abit outta my league though..
Good luck.

Simon.

Hi Matt, it's like when were younger, we are scared to death to jump off the high dive.Go ahead and take the leap I have some old Tamiya kits that I am using the figures and my surgical kit Hacking away and see what may come.