Chess set design

     I did some thinking after last class, I was really liking the idea of vases, but there was something that was really intriguing about the chess set. So I left behind the vases and made a list of things I wanted my chess pieces to have, and what the theme for them would be. I went through a lot of my Pinterest boards to choose something that I felt would be interesting, and that's how I decided upon Pokemon. 

    I know next to nothing about chess, so I had to do some really quick Google searches to know exactly how many pieces I needed to design, as well as what the pieces' importance was so that I could choose what Pokemon I wanted to assign to which piece. The other thing that I went back and forth on was whether or not I wanted the pawns to be Pokemon or Pokeballs, after a bit of thinking I figured making them pokeballs would probably be better, that way I could focus more effort on designing the back row of pieces. I'm also going to try to figure out if I want a more minimalist design, those would be with some key identifiers (ears or tails) to be able to tell them apart, maybe just the heads as the pieces or the entire Pokemon on some sort of base.

    I started out with a fairly simple design, a cone with a sphere on top and two donut things, one holding the Pokeball to the cone, and one at the base of the cone to give it a bit of flair. Then I tried to give it some colour, just to start giving myself an idea of how to colour the final version of my Pokepawn. To make the line that separates the top and bottom of the Pokeball, I grabbed a donut shape and did a boolean difference, the circle was a cylinder that was also a boolean difference and the two cylinders on top were a boolean union. To colour the shapes, I tried to split them first, but that didn't really work out after, so I exploded the surface and coloured them like that with the eggshell paint option for the material and voila.

     One team is classic Pokeball red, and the other is not so-classic Pokeball green, honestly, I'm having a lot of fun figuring out these details, but I do realize that unless I separate the coloured details and print them separately to assemble later, then I'll have to hand paint them, these Pokepawns are relatively easy, so it's just the bigger pieces that worry me a little bit.

    I'm also debating adding more details on the base of the Pokepawns, just to add a bit more customization for the pieces. Since I did decide that each side would be based on Pokemon teams like in the games, I might add some form of detail that would identify the player on the base of all the pieces, like a signature in a way, anyways, I'm really excited about this, and I can't wait for the opportunity to print out my test piece this week!

    

    I made a board, that I have been thinking of laser cutting, but for now, it just helps me visualize what the final versions of the pieces look like. I want to try a render once I have some back-row pieces to simulate a game. The base for my Pokepawns was 1in by 2in, so I made the individual blocks 1in by 1in, and after just elongating them using the gumball feature, that way the pieces fit in the squares