Friday, 15 February 1980

Prosthetic Adams Apple

As part of my experimentation I wanted to create a prosthetic Adam's apple. An adam's apple is something that can only really be seen in men so is a clear difference between a man and a woman. A small Adam's apple could be done with highlighting and shading a woman's neck but I wanted to try to make a more prominent one to help with a convincing female to male transformation. I knew from my research that an Adam's apple is made up of two plates of cartilage meeting together at an angle. It wasn't important for me to sculpt this in along with the skin texture on a neck. I was going to do a close mold prosthetic from a life cast of a neck but I decided to first see if it would work in a flat piece as this would be a lot quicker and easier method of making a prosthetic piece along with saving a lot of material.






It took a while to get the right height and shape for the Adam's apple as I was basing my sculpt off pictures and diagrams but in the end I was happy with my sculpt.


My first attempt at a prosthetic didn't work very well. Something went wrong with the cap plastic, perhaps not letting each layer dry fully before applying the next one so the piece ripped away from the flashing. I also put a drop too much pigment in the silicone meaning the piece lost it's translucency and skin like realness.





The second run of the prosthetic was much better as the cap plastic stayed intact around the piece. There is a slight wrinkle in the center but that can hopefully be made less noticeable with IPA. The piece has a lot better translucency too. Overall I am happy with how the piece came out as I like the shape (especially the tendon shape running down from the top of the Adams apple) and I don't think it has turned out too big. I'm also happy with how the texture has been translated into the silicone.