The ”stealable” items continues
New week, new challenges. I have continued developing and designing the items that the protagonist is going to steal. Not only have I made the design on the finished artefacts better and given then a more equal look to each other.
This week I have put down lots of hours on Mr Fancy’s old grandfather’s clock. Since we stuck with the original stealable items from the concept document, we have been able to save time that we can focus on actual designing and drawing instead of figuring out new objects and their properties. The clock for example will work as an item that the thief can carry and drop off (steal) as well as use as protection from Mr Fancy’s shotgun.
To make my fancy clock I decided to use the typical ”Moraklocka” as reference. Most other designs on this type of clock are almost always pretty square, but I thought the round shapes would make it look more fancy and antique. At first, I stood between the choices of making it white with golden details or brown with golden, but when I decided a wooden pattern would enhance the fancy feeling I trashed the white design. White on wooden texture looks cheap.
Since i am pleased with my art piece I kept working with it during the week and made it ready for the thief to carry around. The clock will be almost as high as the walls, and the protagonist is much shorter, i realized it would look stupid if he carried it straight up as it was standing. This would make it higher than the walls, resulting in it ”hitting” the roof. To fix this i did two things. First i tilted it, which also would make it look heavier to carry, like the thief have problem carrying it straight. I also shrunk it, to make in look more proportional to the avatar.
The trickiest challenge I met during this project was to make the shape look clear even from the sides. Since we had agreed on the stealables to be clean (so the player can easily spot them) I did not want to work too much with shadows. I tried several different methods but all of them made them look clean but more or less square. I finally gave in and made softer shadows because even if it does not fully fit into the art style, it keeps it roundness.
Ciao!
Ellen Mellåker 
This is a good post.
You have properly described your work process, goals, thoughts, aims and results well. The introduction text describing the clock in particular give a good insight to what exactly we are talking about. This, mixed with the two images posted clears any confusion and makes it ease to follow through.
While most of the post follow a nice chronological order, you could have mentioned the clean lines a bit earlier. This is nit-picking, I know, but seeing as the clean lines would be something you agreed on before you even began working with this, and seeing as the rest of the post follows chronologically, mentioning that earlier would be nice.
It would also have been nice to see the clock next to the avatar, compare the two. You mentioned its size was remade in proportion to the player, makes me wonder what it looks like now.
Again, nit-pick. Good job.
GillaGilla