New armature development

My ball and socket armature prototype Testing materials and the joint tension.  

The last few weeks I found myself in need of a good armature that I can re-use over and over with a few practical, at least for me, features. I need my armature to have realistic and good human proportions, It needs to be strong & stable, easily adjustable as well as affordable enough to that I can have at least four armatures for us to sculpt on simultaneously. This is for a project where we will be creating 4-12 sculptures of more or less the same size.  

I ended up with a concept design that is very much a robust larger replica of the ball and socket armatures that the stop motion animators use with proportions based on various skeletal studies and drawings such as Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian man.

The main benefit of the ball and socket system is that it replicates the human joint movement very accurately. You can also adjust the tension of each individual joint making it easy to adjust but also have a very sturdy structure.

I now have fabricated three joints testing my materials and it seems fairly feasible. It will of course be a bit more expensive than my normal welded steel armature, but will hopefully make up for it when I need to make minor adjustments and when re-using.