Habbo Chinese Zodiac art competition entry

Hello, Habbo Hotel: Origins and SpaceHey community.

This is my entry for the Chinese Zodiac art competition hosted by Habbo Hotel: Origins. I decided to upload my pictures as a blog here, so that I can share the (thought and art) process with the Habbo staff, and at the same time share my artwork with the SpaceHey community. It took me forever to make this, so I might as well show it off, haha.

The goal of the competition was to make a mosaic portraying one of the Chinese Zodiac animals using only items that exist within Habbo Hotel: Origins. For any non-Habbos, click here to view the competition page.

So let's start off with my finished art piece.

Can you tell what it is? Why, it's a good old rat. Why a rat? Because rats are rat-her cool. I took quite a lot of art process pictures, so I'll explain my process with those pictures.

Picture one shows only the items I planned on using (huge shoutout to the Habbox Wiki for having so many asset pictures). I planned on using the shelves as legs, the bed as snout, the area divider as ears and the rubber ducks as eyes (I later changed this). I decided to make the rat gray. Not that there was a whole lot of choice. Habbo Hotel: Origin's collection of furniture is much more limited than Habbo's huge collection, and since I couldn't find a list of all the items that were in Origins specifically, I mostly relied on items that are currently in the store, to make sure I didn't accidentally use items that haven't been released on Origins and break the rules of the competition. Also, yes, I made this in the program I usually use to draw, because I didn't know what other program to use. EVERY item in my artwork is a SEPERATE LAYER. I'm impressed my laptop could handle it.

A picture of my screen with a paper of my Habbo Hotel: Origins handle. I wanted to provide both on-screen and in-real-life proof that I made this artwork. I used the Trax machines as outline for the rat.

I got the idea to color in the rat with coffee tables. Because it's so shiny, I figured it might look like fur. After I completed it, though, I saw how chaotic it made the piece. Instead of looking more like a rat, it now looked less comprehensible. So I decided to hide all of these layers, and go for something different.

I thought the coffee tables could be some kind of highlight around the rat. I didn't want to waste the coffee tables, because they had such a great shape for a project like this. I switched the eyes from rubber ducks to lodge corner plinths, because I felt like that made them look a bit more like eyes. I did want to use the ducks SOMEHOW, given how popular and beloved they are by the Habbo community, including me. I also wanted to keep yellow and gold in the artwork, but I'll explain that with my next picture.

This is when I started working on the background. I wanted to mostly use a red and yellow/gold theme, because those are pretty much THE colors of Chinese/Lunar New Year. (Basically what red and green is to Christmas.) The red symbolizes good fortune and the gold symbolizes great wealth! Coincidentally, red and yellow are also the colors of the Chinese flag, even though the colors have different meanings in that context. The Plasto dining table (in red) allowed me to add a lot of red to the background, while also keeping a sort of pattern going with the silver base on them. I thought it looked quite nice!

And here is my final picture of proof: the finished art piece. It's not perfect, but I'm especially proud of managing to create a fun background pattern with the limited items of the shop (and the silver Christmas star that I know is in the game because I own it there, LOL). Also kind of forgot about the rat's tail until the last moment, but oh well, it's added now.

Hope you enjoyed looking at my art, and hopefully see you on Habbo Hotel: Origins. B]

-- WiNTERiZER on SpaceHey/xxGHoSTxx on Habbo Hotel: Origins