Prince - 1/9th Scale Poseable Pony!

Introducing...Prince!

Yet another late post, this project was actually done in March 2025, but for me that’s still a pretty good timeframe from completion to blog post. 😂 

One of my long term hobby goals is to make Max a horse. Not just a static statue, but a fully poseable articulated 1/6th scale horse so she can go out on hacks and jump and gallivant to her heart’s content.

(As per usual, I don’t give myself easy projects!)

I’ve made articulated creatures before (obviously Baxter, and a handful of other art dolls from back in the day) but horses are very different beasts, and something I knew would be considerably trickier, especially considering the fact I’d need it to be sturdy enough to support the weight of a doll and tack, whilst still being able to be posed. Once upon a time I made a 1/6 horse; Inky, whose decidedly wobbly and battered body still leans precariously against one of my shelves; her wire core being far too weak for the rest of her. She was a labour of love, and while I do cringe a bit looking at her now, she was a good first attempt all things considered.

I’ve got lots of ideas for a new horse using much improved techniques, but at the moment I don’t have all the materials to get started the way I want, so in the meantime I thought I’d do a test run and start off with a pony. I’ve got a few 1/6 child dolls, so I thought it would be fun to make a Shetland for them to ride. Unfortunately as you’ll see, it ended up not turning into one so I just dropped down a scale to 1/9th (better known in the model horse hobby as Traditional scale) and decided he could be a crossbreed instead. The irony is that I don’t really do much in trad scale, so he’s become something of a rarity in my collection. 😂

Anyway, onto the step by step!

 

The first thing I did was print out a few skeletal diagrams I found online, along with some pictures of ponies in motion so I could sketch out a rough draft of what I wanted and compare it to a doll. My sense of scale and measurements has always been closer to vibes than strict accuracy, and ponies do have a kind of sliding scale when it comes to height so I thought I could get away with it.

What really clinched it for me was finding the perfect head in one of my many body boxes, courtesy of this rather sad looking flockie I bought at a car boot sale years ago. It was a little smaller than I’d have liked, which ultimately did affect the scale of the whole thing, but it was lightweight and easy to chop off which was definitely a bonus.

Sorry pony! 🙈

 

 

 

 Once decapitated, I gave it a nice little facelift by peeling off its ‘skin’ and carefully removing the eyes and saving them for later. The pupils are round which is obviously not realistic for horses, but they still look nice so I kept them.

 

For my future big horse I’ll be using plastic armatures as they’re much more flexible and sturdy (though expensive!) but for this one I just stuck to wire as I wasn’t intending to do much posing and it was going to be something of a test run anyway. 

 

 

I’ve got a huge roll of plastic covered copper wire I inherited from my grandpa’s garage, so that became the core. I used some hot glue to hold the limbs on more securely after wrapping the wire with floral tape and also used some wooden beads to form the base of the hooves. I can’t remember exactly what I used to pad out the ribcage, but I covered it up with waxed florist’s tape which I wrapped round the torso and eventually most of the skeleton as well. The head was both glued and sewn into place - I drilled holes at the back and sewed through them, hoping that it would be a stronger connection than glue alone. I’m not sure if it made much difference in the end though.

Once I was happy with the core structure, I tightly wrapped some wadding round it to start forming the musculature. I soon discovered that the synthetic fibre could be needlefelted like wool, so I spent quite a long time doing that which helped compact the wadding and build up the anatomy.

 

The further along I got, the less Shetlandy it looked. It’s always difficult when you start off with a bare armature because it’s all too easy to make the neck and legs too long or short, and once you get to a certain point you can’t really go back.

I tried giving it a bigger belly and built up the neck more but it just wasn’t enough as the head would end up way too small, so by this point I decided to just carry on and see what it turned into rather than trying for the impossible. 

At this point I smoothed out a few rough patches on the head and sculpted his hooves directly onto the beads and wire with epoxy putty. I scored and sanded the wooden beads first so the epoxy had extra grip which definitely helped.

Shortly afterwards I decided to change the ears. As cute as the face was, I’m a sucker for articulation, and I just knew that having poseable ears would absolutely make this project, so a little careful cutting later he was de-eared, and using my scalpel, I carved out the holes they left a little more. The head was mostly hollow, which was great from a balance point of view, as many of my past creations have been a little front-heavy, but less so when you’re trying to sink some ball joints into it without them falling into the skull cavity. 

Eventually I managed to fill enough of the space with hot glue and more epoxy, and carefully positioned some ball joints I had in my stash. You have to keep moving them while the glue dries so they don’t stick, but not too much or you’ll smoosh the cavity out of shape. Once done, I carefully built up the edges with epoxy so the joints wouldn’t fall out, drilled holes in the old ears to fit the ball joint pegs and glued them into place. They’re a little wonky but bring so much character to his expression! 

Now came the tricky part, the ‘skin’.

 

I used incredibly cheap fur fabric for Inky back in the day, trimming it down for a shorter coat whilst leaving it long on her legs for feathery feet which worked quite well, but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind for this one. Had he still resembled a Shetland as planned, I’d originally wanted to make him a pinto, but for some reason that just didn’t seem right now, and I didn't think he'd suit it. I had a scrap of fabric which I thought would have been perfect in another colour, as the texture was nice and 'furry', but not overly so, but all I had was this scrap and no knowledge of where I got it. 

 

 

 

I wondered if it was some kind of four way stretch ‘minky’ but my desperate googling didn’t help me much, and it wasn’t until I visited a local fabric shop’s closing down sale that I suddenly spotted it in a very unexpected place. 

 

Turns out it wasn’t fur fabric at all, but ‘fleece lined alpine sweatshirting’ material! What I'd taken to be the 'fur' was actually just a long piled fleece, and I was delighted to find it was just as stretchy as the sample piece I already had. Unfortunately they only had a couple of colours in stock, but when I saw this one I immediately thought of palomino or buckskin and bought a couple of metres to play with.

 

 

With this in mind I painted the head to match. It was an interesting challenge to try to emulate not only the colour but the texture of the fabric, and give him more hair texture than I normally would in this scale. I used my usual favourite Citadel paints, along with some watercolour pencils for detailing.

 

There’s still a disconnect between the two textures of plastic and fabric I tried to disguise with a bit of mane on the finished model, but it’s closer than I expected to get. I gave him a nice big friendly blaze and pink chin, and decided he ought to have four socks as well, so the hooves were painted accordingly. I also carefully glued his eyes back in, and despite the round pupil, they’re so full of life, so I’m really glad I kept them.

 

I did this part a little backwards, and gave him socks before anything else, using some white ‘minky’ fabric I already had in my fabric hoard. It’s not the perfect match to the sweatshirting, but it’s close enough at a glance. I just cut out some thick strips and glued the bottom part just above the hooves so they’d overlap the epoxy slightly, making sure that I brushed the ‘hair’ down and over the hooves, then sewed into the wadding and closed up with an invisible stitch. 

If I'd been sensible I'd have made a rough pattern from tissue paper or scrap fabric and then worked out where the markings and seams would go, but I've never been sensible a moment in my life, so of course I made things a million times more complicated for myself

 

 

For the body, I just roughly cut out and draped the fabric over it upside down so the 'good' side was against his body and pinned along the contours. I then drew along where I wanted the seams and cut them out with a little seam allowance. I did the legs first and separately, with the idea being that I could hide the seams and define the musculature at the same time with more hidden stitches, in the same way plushie makers do with 'thread sculpting'. This worked for some areas, like the chest and shoulders, but the seams along the belly ended up really obvious and the right side looks particularly bad. It does kind of look like a blanket clip, so perhaps we can pretend he’s growing out his last clip. 😂 

 

Once all sewn up I had…regrets. I just wasn’t feeling the palomino at all, so I added some shading to the knees with fabric and alcohol markers, found some black acrylic yarn I combed out and straightened for hair and voila! A buckskin! 

 

 

He accidentally became a dun when I added a dorsal stripe to hide some dodgy stitching on the back, which wasn’t really my intention but oh well, he looks much better now than he did as a palomino! I also gave him some subtle dapples and highlighted the musculature with an alcohol marker, but these have unfortunately faded over time, along with the leg shading. I gave him darker ear tips too with acrylics, as well as a little glued in ear fluff for that proper pony vibe.

Those articulated ears worked exactly as I'd hoped and I couldn't get enough of that snotty pony attitude!

 

Unfortunately, I just couldn't accept the hair. Acrylic yarn can be great for doll hair, but it wouldn’t lie down properly, was too short and just didn’t look right, so I unpicked my stitches and took it all out to replace it with some Tibetan goat’s hair I’ve had in my stash for years. It’s still shorter than I’d have liked, but it’s much more naturalistic and I love the texture.

I needle felted and sewed it into the wadding of the neck and then sewed the ‘skin’ up around it. The tail was done in stages, from the end of the tailbone up. I left in some of the acrylic yarn to help bulk it out as the mohair wasn’t long enough for the effect I wanted.

At last he was done!

Here he is next to my lovely Copperfox Exmoor from the original Kickstarter, and with his new rider, Katie, who I customised way back in 2021!

Next to Max you can see just how un-Shetlandy he turned out in the end, much too leggy and with a far smaller head. If you squinted you might be able to get away with it, but I think he’s definitely destined for 1/9th scale after all, especially when paired up with a Trad scale adult rider/handler.

 

I found a western saddle tree in my tack making stash, but haven’t got round to making one yet as I’m not sure I want to commit to it. I like him as a child’s pony, and besides, western isn’t really a thing here. Still, I did make him a vaguely western-ish bridle as I thought he’d suit the tan leather over a darker shade. If I ever managed to get a better 1/9 scale adult rider I might consider doing him a proper western set though.

 

 

 

 

While ultimately the wire armature is more fragile, I’m really pleased with his flexibility and posing, and the ears make all the difference!

  

I had way too much fun posing him, and playing around with my favourite stopmotion app, 'O Snap' to take advantage of those ears.  

Unfortunately I don't have much in the way of trad scale backdrops, so this random concrete one would have to suffice.

 

                                                                    

He can canter...

...trot...

...grumble...

...and complain...

...but also get into a nice outline!

He can rear...

...and jump too! (with a little assistance)

 I probably won’t do much with him as 1/9th scale isn’t really my thing, but hopefully one day when I’ve got him a proper tack set I might see if I can do some scenes. I can definitely see him being both the perfect angel pony who does everything perfectly, and the grumpy little shit who throws a strop over nothing and threatens to bite if he doesn’t get treats. 😂

We had a tiny little bit of snow this week, so I took him out for an attempted photoshoot while my toes gradually went numb. The dodgy stitching on his off side really bugs me, but it's too late to change it now so I'll just have to put up with it. 

 

^ This one is probably closest to his true colour, its difficult to get right in photos!

As soon as he turned dun he named himself Prince, so he’s obviously very sure of his position in the herd hierarchy! I see him as some kind of welsh cross, maybe Sec D or C crossed with something smaller and fluffier.

So yeah, not quite a year overdue, but here he is! I'd love to say, as I do every year, that I want to blog more, but we'll see. As ever comments and suggestions for more posts is always greatly appreciated!