Our new MA in collaboration with Falmouth University teaches the contemporary hybrid approach to creating prosthetics. It took two years to develop and the first cohort of students began the year-long course in September.
Launching this pioneering course was always going to be a big undertaking, but launching it in the midst of a global pandemic brought with it a host of unforeseen challenges.
A major amount of work to redesign the delivery of the teaching and adjust the workshop space to make it Covid-safe was done over the summer ready to welcome a full quota of students on September 21st, when they joined students on the other dynamic courses in the university’s state-of-the-art School of Film and Television.
Course Leader Dr. Anna Misiak and the fantastic technical services team joined forces with Neill Gorton to take the students through a busy first study block. This included life study with live models using the students’ personal choices of medium – pencil, charcoal, paint or clay for example; an introduction to digital sculpting tool Z-Brush with Millennium FX’s Concept Designer Christopher Goodman; the contextual studies module ‘Screen, Culture, Society’ and a challenging practical prosthetics project taught and guided by Neill. The film school’s excellent weekly lecture and masterclass series was also on offer and the study block concluded with a presentation by each student about the projects they created with Neill. Here’s a taste of what that task comprised:
The brief was to design and sculpt a creature or character bust in WED clay then mould and cast it out in four aesthetic or technical variations. This deliberately pushed the students out of their comfort zones from the start and required them to experiment with various ways of art finishing including different paint systems, painting on silicone and latex, and specialist techniques such as hair-punching, flocking and tattooing.
This work brought lots of new processes and challenges into play for everyone and the results were great!
Next on the agenda for the students will be furthering their Z-Brush skills then creating a digital version of their characters.
We’re delighted with how this study block went and the students have really bonded as a group. The next study block will bring exciting developments to the course – look out for coverage in the New Year!
