hi my name is Dave lemon I'm a professional sculptor I've been sculpting since the 60s and up until about a year ago I was making my own armatures but then I found out through an artist friend of mine who knows the gentleman who owns true form arbiters in Texas that they have a armature system that I might be an interested in so I bought my first armature about a year ago from them just soon after they started doing the business and I I'm totally impressed with their ability to make armatures from the artist now I'm going to talk in this video about the horse armature this is the smallest horse armature that they have and there's two sizes right now and they could change at some point in the future because this is brand-new and just came out and that at one time it II didn't have the horse armature but they came out with a quarter sized horse which I'll show you right now you can see the size difference and this is a one-sixth size horse here you can see the size difference they're both the same kind of arbitrary system just different sizes and what I'm going to show you and demonstrate on right now is the small horse the one six life-sized horse and show you how to use the armature without breaking it because they're durable but they're not indestructible now the true form horse armature system when you order one comes with a base and a support and let me just show you how simple this is to put together this is the system that you get you get the horse all wrapped up in bubble wrap and if you notice in the back of the horse you're looking down you can see where there's a wire going through here now that wire runs all the way through here and all the way up into the neck and that's the main support of this horse and he goes right through this foam body here now the reason they have that wire and that hole is because the armature which I'll show you in a video right now there is a slot in this threaded rod that you slipped the center wire in inside the thorax down on to what you do is you just drop the horse down on to that slot that wire that's in the center and there's a nothing to supply with the armature that matches the threads on the main support you just tighten it down and voila you have an art horse armature that's supported and stuff like that if you don't want the body to move back and forth I would suggest stuffing clay up in here before you start sculpting up it as a whole just to keep solidify that so it doesn't move you can adjust the angle of the horse a little bit there if you want to make the horse into a tighter turn like these running and barrel racing or something like that you the horse is that instead of standing straight up he'd be more of at an angle you would take this plate off this board by the way you can you don't have to be restricted to the board you can you can actually use this system on any board because all it takes is just a couple you know these screws go into whatever board you put it on you undo these screws you make a wedge at the angle if you want the horse to be at in your sculpture and then you used to glue it to the board that you're going to have it on and then you put the plate down on that and it will automatically take the angle of that wedge and you screw it on to that support and your horse is at a different angle the horse can be adjusted in length depending on what kind of horse you're doing you know Arabian or a horse you just push in on the hips make the distance between the rear flank or the rear part of the horse shorter or you can pull on it to lengthen the horse depending on the horse you're doing the horse's head comes off very easily and if you want to work on the horse's head separately you just make a one get wire gauge the same thickness as this and match it and make a little jig and just do your head separately so that you work it off on it in a more comfortable position and then it's just a matter of putting his head back on to the body the legs are these foam bones do not have a resin bones do not have wire going down through the wire just goes in so far into the bone both points of the joint and so you've got to be very careful when you bend these because you these are very thin they're very durable for clay and stuff like that but they're not indestructible so what you want to do is grab above and below the joint and just adjust it that way by pulling in and out and do it slowly don't do it fast you don't want to be breaking any land-speed records and vet it up and then of course the same thing with this part of the bone here you can take it out like that or you can take it down like that but you always grab above and below the joint the wire and some of the older versions of this are steel wire and they're harder to band you've got to be very careful because if you don't know that that stealing you go to bend it you could break that bone right there but now they put aluminum wire into them and it's easier to bend but you still hold on to the joint because you don't want to take any chance of breaking the bone same goes for up here back here on and you can change the the position of the shoulder by just holding on to the joint right there going forward or going backwards this is I guess you know they're connected the two shoulder blades through the foam thorax so that they swing like that and after you get it in position where you want it and just put clay underneath the shoulder blade to keep it in position while you're working on it the rear leg same thing just hold on to the upper bone or the upper part of the bone and just twist it forward now these have cuts it this one has a cut in it where you can lengthen this bone even longer if you if you need to make it longer there's a wire and going through that so that you can actually lengthen the bone same thing with all down here I'm going to show you just above and below the joint end bend backwards and same here forward and the wiring down here below the lake where the hoof is you put it in a position you want to by just bending it if it's steel wire and to test it before you go bending it you know it's done if you have a resistance it's it's the steel wire and if it is then you want to take a pair of needle nose pliers and just hold it right there and bend it with the needle nose while holding the bone you don't ever want to put any pressure on the center part of the bone if you want to bend the back of the horse or you change the position of the hips for the movement of the horse you just bend down on it the whole system bends down and takes any position you want and likewise for the other other direction as well they have a soft thorax for the larger horse you know because if you're having the horse doing like a bucking position or some of that where the the thorax would be compressed its compressible the softer thorax I'll tell you these armatures will save you hours and hours of Parmenter making when I first started it took me a long time before I got the courage to do my first horse because of the fact that I had no idea how to make the armature they ended up making their own which was the same way I make mine but I do it with just wire and different much different than what you see here my support is always in the belly though all right that's gonna do it for this video on the horse armature what I did on this small horse is the same thing you do on a larger horse it's there's no difference I hope you enjoy this it's a great way to learn and what better way to teach yourself the muscles then have a base for the muscles and that's what this is - but for you know professionals and for non professionals I can't think of a better better way to do it I mean you make your own armature as an amateur and you're gonna make mistakes and this eliminates those mistakes and it's a good learning tool and you'll learn how to sculpt the horse much quicker on something like this and you will on your own armature so I can't I can't tell you more highly how much I recommend these armatures I've see that some of the top sculptors in the country use these foam arbiters and the reason why is because they it's a tool and artists are determined their quality of their work does not only by their talents but I'll by their tools and this is no different than buying it stretched canvas and putting paint on it it's it's just how you look at it it's not cheating by any means it's just saves the artists ton of time ton of measurements and why not use the best system possible and ask this just right here trueform armatures calm