Callings Research by Alisha

While reading some of the stories in the book Callings, the job that stood out to me was a Forensic artist. Sharon Long story on page 23 made me think of all the TV shows that have a forensic artist help with almost every case.

There are many skills needed for this job, some very obvious, for example drawing and artistic skills. As well as advanced training in anatomy, anthropology, and the reconstruction process. A forensic artist also needs to be flexible and confident because most of the time they are working with a witness and may need to change something in their work at any given time.

There are not many tools needed for this job, a lot of the work is done on a computer. When the artist is doing a 2-D reconstruction there has recently been a software program that quickly creates an approximation. Which helped speed up the process and allow variations of any kind to be made easily and with the press of a button. Another reconstruction that is used is 3-D. this originally was done by sculptures but not used very much today unless they have a skull that is in to many pieces and they have to put it back together like a puzzle. Another type of reconstruction is superimposition which is used in a case where they know a little bit about the victim and can use a photo and line it up with an x-ray to make sure everything lines up almost exactly.  The way this usually works is that they find someone that matches the bone structure and went missing around the same time. Then they find the photo on missing persons. Even with all of these reconstructions being done mostly by a computer, a forensic artist is still on sight and controlling everything.

This photo shows the step by step of a 3-D reconstructions that was done by hand instead of using a computer like how most are done today.

http://www.askaforensicartist.com/what-skills-are-needed-to-be-a-forensic-artist/

https://www.theiai.org/certifications/artist/requirements.php