Rio

So we are working on a game where a character is going to pickup objects. The character is a 2D sprite that can face in 8 directions. If the object is lifted while the character is facing up (so you see the back of the head) the object should be rendered behind the character and in front if the character is facing down (and you can see the character's face). We also wish to render a shadow under the object being lifted. It seems to me that the best/easiest solution for this is to include the ability to post a Z value along with x and y in the point object. Is this possible? Is there a better solution? Thanks! A