Sarah Roberson: Prosthetic Cover

Concept:

For my concept for the prosthetic sleeve, I decided to go with a design based off my favorite named Shiro who is a character in Voltron: Legendary Defender. The character of Shiro is captured by the villains of the series and is held captive for a year. While he is captured, his right arm is replaced with a prosthetic device which powers up when he needs to do become a weapon (Power up pictured in the bottom frame). I wanted to base my designs off of his character because he can do some pretty awesome things with his arm and if I was to actually create my designs, I feel like kids would really enjoy something based off of a character like Shiro. 

Another inspiration came from Knights armor. I really liked the way it looked bulky, but at the same time looked really functional. I also really liked the idea of having some sort of piece that covered the knee like a knee pad, but wasn't quite a knee pad. 

(Frontal Pass 1)

(Side Pass 1 with added detail on the back)

(Side Pass 2 Exploring ways to change my design up)

(Side Pass 3 Exploring ways to make the design on the back better. I also added color notes for Keyshot whenever I do that)

Design Work:

I started out, by drawing my designs on paper. I did several passes of it, experimenting with color, and the design and overall feel of what I was about to create. Because I wanted to do a piece that resembled Knight's armor, but then had the sleek look of the Prosthetic Shiro's character has, I decided that the knee pads and ankle supports would be the main source of knight armor look. And then the middle portions of the design would be the sleek look. 

I explored several ways to make my designs work by and finally settled on a design that incorporated the way Shiro's arm looks when it is powering up and the armor Shiro actually wears in the show. So what I did was, I took the back portion where your hamstring would be and created a what I like to call lattice pattern in the back that symbolized it powering up. The front is inspired by the armor that Shiro also wears when he is in combat. This, to me, created like a Clone Trooper armor feel like from the Clone Wars series

Keeping with those same ideas, I also did an arm piece because I wanted to see what I can do. Now for lack of time, I will not be doing the arm right away, but if I have time, I want to see what I can do with it.

(Final On Paper Design Front and Side Views)

                                         

Basically it continued the idea from the leg, but this time, I was trying not to make it look like Shiro's arm in the above pictures. I wanted to make it different and yet follow alongside the same ideas and designs I created for the leg.

Modeling Techniques:

How I modeled the designs was a lot of trial and error. I drew out the lines and created the initial shape by using the polyline tool and then also drew a nurbs circle. Once I got the lines where I wanted them, I did a Network Surface to create the main shell. 

When I learned about the flow along surface command, I deviated from my initial drawings slightly by using the pattern that I was initially just going to put on the back, and do it all the way around. I really liked way that it gave off a more completed and unified look than what I had in mind to begin with.

To design  the texture and the holes, I used lines to create a maze like pattern. I then extruded it and flowed it along the surface of my shell. But that ended up creating a manifold edge. I then took the same design and instead of extruding it, I flowed the lines onto the surface to create what you see in the pictures above. 

For all of the armor pieces (Shown in purple) on the front and back of the design, I used ellipsoids which I rebuilt and stretched using the points to create the shape of armor. For the straps on the bottom I also used a stretched ellipsoid. For the ankle pieces, I extruded a nurbs circle. 

The strap on the top (White strap on the top) I drew a curve and used the pipe tool to create the shape. Then I used the gum ball to stretch it so it was more flat and to make it look more like a strap.

Material Choices:

To complete my design, the material choices, I chose for the Keyshot renderings were white, black, yellow and red hard, shiny plastics. All of the color choices were to reflect on the color scheme of the character I based my designs off of. The only color I was unable to fit into the renderings was the purple.

With Filleted Edges:

I finally figured out what was wrong with my filleted edges so I included both versions because I also really liked the way the design turned out without them. For the material choices in Keyshot, I stuck with the same materials as the ones above, but I varied the shots up because I wanted you to get different views as well as to showcase other parts of the design that were't previously shown.

I also ran into the issue where I had super tiny naked edges that I couldn't find after I finished the filleting, so that is why there are naked edges in the Ghosted painted black image. I really wanted to showcase the various ways you can use a design.