Find out more about Arms Race Escalation: armsracemovie.com In our latest prop building video, we show you how to create a nifty mechanical arm that can be worn by your actors.
you have a wonderful attention to detail, you should build another one of the oppsite arm and attach it to a torso to create a steampunk clockwork automaton.
It is a film prop. Animation of the arm requires using stop motion techniques it does not move of its own accord. It was built to use in a short sequence for our Sci Fi short: Arms Race Escalation.
Simplistic yet very effective at looking like the real dead... if they had clockwork prsthetics for real back in Victorian era Britain of course :P You should make another pair that can be manipulated to move the hand via pullwire controls next, would love to see how those turn out. Great videos and tutorials, can't wait to see more steampunk goodness!
For the filming there was no plan to animate it. It was planned as a sideprop for additional detail. But based on the way I built it you could use stop motion to animate it. All the joints work and hold their position well. If I can find some time I might have a go at animating it for fun.
I think the key to using it as an extra arm would be to sew another fabric sleeve onto a jacket to put the wooden arm through, then you could attatch the wooden arm to the inside of the jacket.
I thought about controlling it with wires, but it would require two sets of wires one set to bend the fingers and then another set on the opposite side to straighten them (or I could have installed springs on one side). I didn't have the time before we started shooting the Arms Race mini series to do this.
I'm not sure if you can get left hands similar to the right hand I used and if I started building a full torso it would become a big project as I would want to make it Animatronic (which is not as difficult as it sounds if you use RC servos.
It's unfortunate that you didn't put springs across the top of the hand and run the cables underneath. If you had, you'd have been able to add rings at the proximal end of the cables, run your own fingers through the rings and have a working arm. It looks great though!
Thank you, I'll try to get your attention in a few months when I post the videos. I'll film the individual hand mechanisms being built in a vid, the hinge and lock mechanisms in another, and the magnetic armor pieces in another (WAAAAY in the future is that last one. Maybe a year.)
yes, but does it work? it looks great, and each part works right from what i saw, but i cant help but wonder what it would be like attached to a person
Unfortunately it cost more than $20, I would guess somewhere in the region $70 or $80. The main costs being the wooden artists hand and the wood for the arm.
As much as I would like to say yes, I don't think this design would be very practical as an actual replacement arm. The weight of the wood makes it quite heavy and I'm sure a lot more engineering goes into a replacement arm to make it practical for daily use.
how hard would you say it would be for someone with little to no experience to make just the arm, none of the cool steampunk stuff? I want to make a prosthetic limb for a project
As long as you are capable of shaping wood it is not too difficult. The hard parts are shaping the lower arm so it matches the hand and then building the elbow joint. For the elbow if you can get a post like I did with the ball part then you just need to hollow out the socket which takes a bit of time but isn't too hard.
I was loving it until you said "glued small watch parts on for decoration. Then all I could think about was this: /watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA Otherwise, an amazing piece of work.
Well she has an actual wooden arm that works and everything, I meant more of a fun prop for her seeing as she adores steampunk. Thanks for the reply though. :)
