...Did I spell that right? Hope so, because we're off to a rough start if I didn't.
I’ve decided to try and make an accurate (relatively, and to the best of my ability) replica of the Schattenjager Talisman from the Gabriel Knight games. I haven’t made anything like this before, but I thought it would be fun to try, as I have a lot of free time at the moment.
My plan is to make the first version from polymer clay, and if it turns out well, to make a mold from that and cast a final version in a more durable material.
To start, I decided to make a vector drawing outlining the different parts of the talisman. I grabbed a bunch of reference pictures* and used a freeware program called Inkscape to draw an outline. Vector drawings are useful because I can easily change the size or colour of individual parts at any time. I hadn’t used a program like this since high school (which is not a
too distant past for me, but long enough), so this took time. Here's what that looks like:
http://i.imgur.com/UO2lEwQ.pngI’m using this drawing reference for scale, not detail. On the topic of scale, I got stumped trying to figure out how big this thing should be. The details of the talisman are pretty consistent across the official art, but the size is not. And the reference for size is usually either someone’s chest or hand (big man-hands, no less), which is difficult to use for measurement. So in the end, I just guessed

. The outside diameter of my talisman is 11cm, and all the side bits are each 3cm.
To sculpt out all the different parts, I will first print out that part of the drawing in black. I tape a sheet of wax paper on top of it, because wax paper is transparent and the clay doesn’t stick to it. Then, I can shape the clay on top of the wax paper, using the printed drawing as a reference for scale.
Hopefully posting this thread will help me feel motivated to finish this project, and I will post pictures when I have progress to report.
*Most of the references I’m using come from The Pendulum of Life fan-site. The guy who owns this site actually made a 3D mesh of the talisman, which would probably be helpful, but the file ends up corrupted every time I try to download it. Too bad!