GamesBeat: I saw the Red Bull documentary. It looked like that was a lot of fun to make.
Melville: Oh, yeah, that was super fun. The guys I filmed with are great. I don’t drink a lot of Red Bull, but I love the stuff they do with esports and music and things like that. It was a fun weekend, and I got to meet a lot of new people.
GamesBeat: It looked like you were dressed like Adam Jensen there.
Melville: A little bit, yeah.
GamesBeat: You had a bit of the facial hair.
Melville: [Laughs] I don’t know if you know the company Musterbrand, but they did an Adam Jensen jacket. I did actually wear that at one point in the video because why not? They wanted me to look a little more Jensen-ey, so I said, “Sure, I’ll go more Jensen since I’m wearing the arm.” I can’t wait to see more Star Wars arms coming out as well.
GamesBeat: The colored button in the middle, does that indicate something?
Melville: That’s the button I mentioned that can change your grip patterns with your hand. You’ll probably see it in some of the videos. There’s one we did about six months ago that shows more about how it works, with me in it. But that middle button basically changes the grip patterns. You can turn that off and on. It has a freeze mode, so if I’m holding a bag of groceries and walking down the street, instead of tensing my muscles all the time, I can hold down that button to freeze it, and I don’t have to worry about holding in that position. It’ll hold it for me.
GamesBeat: Is the arm very heavy from your perspective? Do you keep it on all the time?
Melville: I wouldn’t say it’s too heavy, really. It’s quite lightweight compared to most things. I don’t wear it every day. There are some days where I just don’t want to wear it, and then some days, I want to wear it all the time. I wear it quite often but not so much that, say, I’m sleeping and waking up with it on. I’m so used to being one-handed that there are days where I don’t wear it.
GamesBeat: And you have to keep it charged, right?
Melville: Yeah. I usually charge it overnight. The battery is pretty good. It has about 24 hours, although usually, you want to keep it fully charged for the next day.
GamesBeat: I saw you have an Instagram account. Do you share much related to the arm there?
Melville: Yeah, most of my Instagram is a lot of video. I’m trying to put more there. Until April of this year, there was a lot that I had to hold back on because I wasn’t allowed to. Obviously, it wasn’t officially out, and the hand was changing. But I have a lot of videos there and a lot of pictures from filming the Red Bull video. I’m drawing stuff and cutting stuff. There are videos showing how the arm works and what I’ve been up to with it. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of drawings — like I say.
Also recently, Mark Hamill spoke about Open Bionics, which obviously for me was — I was just screaming inside because I’m a big fan of his. Not just as Luke Skywalker — but the Joker and a lot of video game characters as well. I drew him the other day with my bionic arm, and I want to get a bit more practice in first, but I want to draw a Jensen as well.
GamesBeat: Was Hamill’s arm in some way notable for you, as far as how it looked in the Star Wars films?
Melville: Well, it was a human hand, and then later on, he just had the glove over it. There were no real similarities in that sense. But just for him to have a cool bionic hand at the end of [The Empire Strikes Back] and then in Return of the Jedi, that was pretty cool.
GamesBeat: How recently did you get this latest version?
Melville: Officially, I got it this April, but before that, I was testing it for the last year. We have three other ambassadors now, so it’s not just me, thank God. We have other people testing it. We have Tilly Lockey, who also wore the Jensen arm. She actually has two Jensen arms, which is even cooler than me. She’s pretty awesome. We have a guy named Luke Manson and another ambassador named Kate Grey. We have loads of kids wearing the arm, loads of new people. Some people who’ve lost their limbs, some people like myself who were born without a limb. We’re getting even more feedback from people, so that’s been great.
GamesBeat: It must be quite a thing to run into other people like that.
Melville: I’ve met a lot of people in the last four years. … There’s an actress called Angel Giuffria who’s known for 3D printing. She has a bionic arm, and she’s really cool. She’s been in tons of stuff. You have James Young who has the Metal Gear Solid arm. I’ve met a lot of Paralympians. We’re being taken more seriously in the last couple of years than we ever have been.