After a group discussion we chose to add a crossbow to the game to spice up gameplay. It fires bolts that are made from dead opponent’s spirits - so I wanted the crossbow and bolt to reflect that. I designed, modelled and animated the crossbow. For the design, I looked at European crossbow’s from the renaissance, and mixed the design language with that of angel wings (or bird wings) to create a memorable design. To make it cooler I wanted it to have some sort of mechanical element, so I created a sort of ‘magic’ mechanism that triggers some cogs to turn and therefore outstretch the wings (which will be accompanied by a gruesome scream) as the crossbow fires. I sketched the design first in 3/4 product view to establish the look and mechanics of it. Then I drew it in top and side view to help me model it. 

 Here’s how it turned out in 3D:

Here's the animation for the crossbow attack and the floating bolt. The wings were tricky - I watched reference videos of birds outstretching their wings, and mimicked the same functionality in the crossbow. Each feather had to be animated separately. I also had a hard time figuring out how to mirror an animation, but I got there in the end.

To show that this is a magic crossbow, the bolt magically floats above the crossbow, with an idle floating animation to maintain player interest.

I also modelled the holy grail, keeping in mind that it will be close to the player camera so I added some subtleties to the form with various layers of metal, curvature around the rim, and gemstones - all with the purpose to make the silhouette more interesting up close. :