Complete chess set

    Finishing this project was straightforward and simple, as of the last blog, I had 2 and a half pieces to design, my knights (which were the half, and the ones subjected to the most change throughout the entire project) and my king and queen. I worked so much on this project in general with a new type of hyperfocus that I legitimately forgot to blink for long periods of time which left me with really blurry vision and needing to wear my glasses at times when I usually don't wear them, which was not ideal, but oh well, what else are you gonna do y'know?

    Anyway, printing my bishop went well, I had to make a few adjustments to the design after I ran it through the slicer. the original design didn't work properly because of the way the arms were dangling out from the base, so I originally took one arm, rotated it so that it would look kinda like the laughing animation from the game, and left the other dangling much closer to the body. Alas, that also did not work properly, so I just took the other arm off completely. I also had to get rid of his funky hat, it didn't fit with the required simplicity that the bishop base seemed to be calling for.

    Oh, my knight, my so many iterations knight, where would I be without you? This design has gone through so many different changes, of the pokemon, of the base, of whether or not it would even have a base. There were just too many things. I started with Pikachu ears and tail, I deemed that far too simple and scrapped the idea. I went to electivier body, I bit off faaaaar more than I could reasonably chew, and after far too many littered trial bodies, I also very quickly abandoned that. Then I came upon the true knight of this chess set, gigalith, who looks like a very fancy rock. The design was focused a lot on angles, so I made the top half of the body based on one of the pentagon pyramid shapes. I crafted what I've been calling the "paper knife" method to cut away the material I don't want on the body, I did the same with the crystals on the front and back of the body and the one on top of the head. The head was a little harder because I couldn't figure out if my paper-knife method would work, so I tried something else and the second I saw it wouldn't I went back to my tried and trusted method. And everything worked out :D The reason this one has no base is because I couldn't figure something out that would fit thematically with the pokemon, the piece and the other pieces I already had, and it wasn't till I was talking to my friend's dad that I realized that since it already looks sorta like a stone, it could be like a carved stone guardian, like with greek architecture, which fits perfectly!

    I mentioned most of how my first rook turned out and since it turned out well, I just printed another one with no change to the design! Taking the supports off of the second was much easier this time around, I started with the material around the whiskers to avoid bending them and breaking them, and then I worked down, the stuff holding the body and the main material surrounding the tower. I remembered that I have      t-pins from my fibre classes which make reaching into those spots easy, and I prevented stabbing myself with things this time around.

    My favourite piece by far is my king, growlithe, which also happens to be one of favorite pokemon. I did a whole bunch of thinking on this one, what I wanted for the design, how to incorporate the "carved into stone" aspect of the knight. I came up only making the head of the piece. This one was also fairly simple to design, and ellipsoid shape for both the head and the snout, at first I was having difficulties with how to make the actual shape of the snout, so I tried adding two more of those shapes for the top of the snout and a sphere for the nose. That did not work, so I brought back the trusty cage edit and everything worked out well. I finished the nose, ears and mohawk mane with my paper-knife technique and now it looks like the best thing I've ever designed.

    My queen was the last piece I designed, there were a few epilloid shapes involved, for the head and for the ears, one cage edit late, and it was practically done, the horn was hilariously the hardest part, I drew out the curve and then did the revolve thing and it worked, so there I was naively thinking I was done, but when I went to boolean union everything together, the ears and head easy peasy, the horn and the head oh no. Several headaches and some very dry eyes later I ended up asking Peter for help, it turns out there was too much point and curve, so that's that I guess. The base for this one is the same for the base on my king, just taller and thinner, I wanted the pieces to seem like they belong together in the theme.

    My final render before the changes to my bishop vs. the final printed and almost all painted pieces.

Painting all my pieces was really fun, being careful of tiny parts to be careful not to paint, not so much, but they turned out so nicely in the end.

This is a small example of what my pallet looked like while I was trying to colour match my designs to more images of the pokemon I was using to the best of my abilities, the colour theory course really did come in handy for this!