Model KA-IV
A project to design a cybernetic arm, with an emphasis on functionality.
The goal of this project was threefold:
Firstly was designing a cybernetic arm without the limit of it being implemented in a game or game enviroment.
Secondly was integrating lore into and around the arm; to think about how it would exist in a fictional cyberpunk world, and what would characterize the fictional company - Hermann Kruger - who manufacture it.
Thirdly, and also relating to the lore, was thinking about the practicality of the arm as a product. Not in the sense that this is an engineering diagram, but thinking about how this product would actually be manufactured, assembled, used and repaired. You should be able to look at it and think how that could work and make sense in-lore.
Part of this project was developing this (albeit very barebones) world which the arm would exist in, and developing some in-lore marketing for the KA-IV and Hermann Kruger, as seen on the poster below. The above video, while here serving to show the arm actually moving, could also be imagined to be part of a billboard or video ad, if you incorporated some the elements found on the poster.
In-lore the arm is initially geared towards military or industrial purposes. But the fact that it is cheap and durable leads to the arm finding universal appeal: It's not the best replacement for a human arm, but for many people in this world it's good enough.
And finally some still renders. The ones with holographic objects serve to display the functionality of the arm performing various tasks. Again, these could be used in-lore either for demonstration or marketing.
The primary idea for the design of the arm is that it should be something rugged and reliable but also relatively cheap and widely available. A thought I had early on was thinking of it as the cybernetic arm equivalent of the AK. This is reflected in the hefty construction of the arm and the modularity of it's assembly. Most parts can be easily replaced if they should break.
Some parts are too complex for this type of assembly though; an example is the bionic adapter found at the end of the arm. This is the part that would be surgically implanted into an interface in your body, which makes on-the-fly repairs rather challenging. In general, the further you go towards the hand, the more the arm can easily be disassembled and repaired - these are also the parts most likely to need repair.
While neither the rig nor the topology of the model were the focus of this project, here they can be seen. The arm is rigged with IK's but I only used them sparingly for some poses. The cables between joints are also IK rigged and move automatically with the joints.
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