This page describes merging a BBI Perfect Body (PB) with parts from a Twilight Magic (TM) female action body from my spares box.
The Twilight Magic bodies were mostly sold as Ghost in the Shell Motoko figures and are nicely sculpted overall, apart from a rather clunky looking waist section.
I acquired this bash as part of a set of body parts, it was already started and partly assembled.
Biggest problem that had yet to be solved was coming up with some hip joints: the TM body originally used a pair of bungee cords between the shoulders and the hips.
The tension in these cords hold the shoulders, waist and hips together and provides friction for the joints.
The PB body uses mechanical joints for hips, shoulders and chest joint, which leaves no room for stringing bungee cords for the hips.
After replacing the hips of a Slim Ladies Mission (LM) body with a set of Barbie hips, I was left with a spare LM waist/hip section. I decided to try and fit the leftover LM hips to this PB bash.
When I looked into resuming this bash I also noticed the shoulder joints had gone limp.
I decided to take the partly assembled body apart and also separate the TM hip section from the PB waist.
Trimming the LM hips to fit inside the TM hip section should be easier than trying to fit the hip assembly into the TM parts, so I also split the TM hip section into its separate halves.
The LM hip section was also split along the seams. It still had the complete waist joint attached, so I cut this off and returned it to my spares box.
Cutting the body parts apart caused the old alignment pins to break, so first thing I did was drilling holes for new pins.
I cut new pins from the sprue of a set of Yellow Submarine joints. Yellow Submarine joints are made of strong polycarbonate and the sprues are meant to be used for projects: having perfectly round cross-sections and exact diameters of 3.0mm, 2.5mm down to 1.0mm.
After separating the upper body halves it became clear what caused the shoulder joints to go limp: the soft plastic rings that are supposed to provide friction had deteriorated and had turned into a crumbly sticky mess.
This might be going on inside other PB bodies as well...
To fit the LM hip section into the TM waist, I started by trimming the outside of the rear of the LM hip section.
I used a sanding drum fitted to a motor tool and trimmed about 1.5mm off of the outside, repeatedly trimming and test-fitting until I was happy with the fit.
Then I repeated the process for the front part of the LM hip section.
The picture shows the trimmed LM hip section assembled and fitted into the TM waist.
