The fourth mini brief

'Articulated Prosthetic' 



So just over a week ago we were told what our new mini brief was going to be which unfortunately I hadn't got around to starting right away due to the fact that I was getting a little worried about how much work  I was going to have to complete before January and was starting to feel more than a little anxious about not getting it done, but with my tutor Marks recommendation, he told me to leave the mini briefs for a little while so that I could spend my time focusing on my research report and studio work. So this is what I have been doing as of recently but I constantly feel like when I am trying to complete all my actual project work, I still have the thought of needing to finish the mini briefs in the back of my mind and it was stressing me out so now that I have done a good amount of studio work I have decided to have a crack at the newest brief we were given. I was going to continue with the third brief which was to do with tree houses but I am actually really struggling with the technical side of this one at the moment so I am going to leave that one for now.



So below are the details of our new brief that was emailed to us by our tutor. I have cut it down a little from what it was so that there are only the points that relate to concept artists:



Concept Art

• Source/design/adapt and articulated prosthetic. 
• Arm(s), leg(s), finger(s), toe(s), it is up to you. 
• The focus is on practical design. 
• You must communicate functionality exclusively through illustration/ presentation of the final model: i.e. no text to explain how things work.
• Consider how you will use this as portfolio piece to impress potential employers. 

So essentially I need to be getting a few sketches down of possible different functioning articulated prosthetic limbs and then draw out a final product that has absolutely no details around the design to explain how it works. Now this may sound rather easy but I imagine when it actually comes to working on the designs It is going to become quite difficult due to the fact that we can't write about how any of it works so our design work is going to have to be very strong. So, the best place to start really is to get down some good image research to help with the design process and to try and make my ideas as realistic and strong as possible. Funnily enough in BA6 I actually did a bit of research into the use of prosthetic limbs when I was looking at making a cyborg design and had actually already compiled a mood board of photographic images on this subject which I have decided to post below as it can easily be reused for this mini brief, but I have also made a new mood board as well to go alongside it so I have done some new research.

I think these are a really nice broad range of photographs and concepts that will hopefully help to influence my design work and ideas. I also thought, as well as gathering image research that I should also do little bit of reading into the topic of prosthetic limbs so that I can learn some basic information about them instead of just basing my designs purely off of images. So I had a look on wikipedia to see what their was written about this topic and after a few paragraphs it started getting a little too technical for me as well as starting to get in-depth about the actual human body and I can get easily woozy from hearing about that sort of thing so I didn't do too much reading research although I did find something really interesting in the article which I have just popped below.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthesis

"A person's prosthesis should be designed and assembled according to the patient's appearance and functional needs. For instance, a patient may need a transradial prosthesis, but need to choose between an aesthetic functional device, a myoelectric device, a body-powered device, or an activity specific device. The patient's future goals and economical capabilities may help them choose between one or more devices."

So essentially this means that when I start designing and sketching on my different prosthetic limb ideas I will really have focus on the fictional person that this aid would be made for and also must consider all the different functions it has and for what purpose have they have been created for. It isn't going to be a case of designing something simply because it is aesthetically pleasing or looks like something from a sci-fi movie, it needs to be both practical and realistic. So, baring this in mind, what I need to move onto now is actually getting some design work done.