You don’t have to be on the ground to use a Clockwork Gobbo. You can even use it in the air, as long as:

  1. you are above the clockwork marker
  2. there is nothing between Croc and the clockwork marker

There are some clockwork gobbo areas you can get into as Croc, without using cheats

(can you collect the Gem/Crystals as Croc, tho?)

Position memory address

Even when doing a Clockwork Gobbo, the game still uses the same XYZ coordinate addresses that Croc uses (presumably, a Clockwork Gobbo is still internally “Croc”, but with a different model and some abilities disabled?)

You can use Cheat Engine to edit the XYZ addresses to warp yourself out of the Clockwork Gobbo area and roll around the normal level, which is kinda funny