[Background Blog] Designing the Echo Anchor Bracelet

As the second merch themed blog this month, we wanted to talk a little bit about the design process that went into the Echo bracelet we helped produce alongside Pawprint Press and Echo Project.

Aanyone who has played the game will know why we picked this, as our first Echo themed item. The anchor bracelet has a particular significance to both the main character and featured as a motif across the game itself.

Starting Out

While this item had a shorter turn-around than the Amicus Plush, it took a lot more revisions to get just right. As with anything, we needed to start with the design for the anchor itself.

This was the first design made by Seachord, a Echo Project regular many may recognise from their Discord server.

Prototyping

The design was then sent to the jewellery manufacturer we were already working with for the Amicus Plush and they turned the design into a 3D model that can be used to base the anchor off.

From here we picked from a few options for the leather cord and received the first sample.

From here we identified a few issues. Firstly that the cord was too short, making it barely possible to fit around even small wrists once you account in for a loop around. Secondly is that it was a little difficult to fit the chord through the gaps in the anchor to lock them in place. 

This is where the second prototype comes in. For this prototype we compared the difference between having the smaller and longer stem of the anchor to change the size of the gap for the loop to fit into. In the end we decided to go for the smaller size since the anchor stayed in place easier. The final leather chord is also a bit softer than the one that was used for these first two prototypes to both be more comfortable, but to also squeeze past the gap in the anchor more easily.

Seachord made another adjustment to the design at this point since we felt that having the Echo logo across the middle of the anchor was too awkward. 

And once we had the longer cord, and the updated anchor design the bracelet part of this was done! But that's not all, alongside this we also had to work on the box to complete the whole package.

Because of connection between the anchor bracelet and the game itself, we wanted to make the box special, and bring over the feeling of the game into the packaging. Above you can see the first design draft for the outside of the box.

The next revision of the box added a few extra details and some texture patterns. There were a few limits associated with the assets we had on hand so we did some upscaling work using an AI upscale and created a pretty clean vector version of the echo logo itself to get the assets up to snuff for print. You might think some of the text is a little large but that's because the box is quite small in real life, like a standard jewellery box.

Above you can see the first prototype box we got back from the factory. There was a few conversion issues between the file we sent and what they could open which caused some layers to be rendered incorrectly in the print which we got resolved for final production.

The Final Item

With both parts sorted we ordered the final production sample, took photos of it, and put together the store assets.

The Echo Anchor Bracelet is currently on pre-order from Pawprint Press and will be shipping out in December.

We think we did a great job at making something the fans of Echo will be happy to receive and we hope you all enjoyed this little look through the work that went into it.

- Studio Klondike