Research
These are some resources I used for this project.
Chess Game Online
All about Chess Pieces
Capitalism info
Exercises
Exercise 1 – Sliceforms
In this exercise, I practiced making slice forms. Starting with some basic ones, I made a person, a pyramid, and a rectangular prism.
After I got some idea of what I was doing, I needed to start solidifying my narrative with my partner. We worked on something regarding Man versus Nature but then it got a bit more specific and ended up somewhere where we could actually start thinking about the forms.
Pollution versus Plant was super broad, so we started examining the two sides and thinking about how they interact and what else they could be.
We landed on a narrative in which capitalism and all it entails is fighting against the Natural world for territory.
Iterations
I tend to get a little crazy with my notes so I kept everything on one page for a long time. This is my “master” page.
I test cut a model of the pawn to get an idea of what the sizes should be. First I made the files
Then I cut out the shape on the cricut.
Seeing how tall this guy was, I made the pawn smaller and decided the bishop, rook, and knight could sit halfway between this and the new size of the pawn. I also cut out some other shapes for what could be the bishop and a possible king building. This was mostly to see how they could form together, not really the form they create.
Another thing to note is the material and color. Chipboard was sturdy, so my partner and I both planned on using that for our forms. I also wanted to use some shining gold cardstock I found at the store for my capitalist pieces.
My idea was that the shimmering gold was a signifier of wealth and I wanted to give some of the more “important pieces” golden features and keep the pawns void of it, highlighting the wealth gap present in our society.
I went ahead and created a middle-height version of the tall pawn for the use of the bishop, rook, and knight. Then, I created a smaller pawn and readjusted his props.
I had a fairly good idea of what I could do with the Lawyer figure, possibly making him the Rook. Mostly because, in capitalism, it’s always lawyers and the justice system in general that prevents any kind of action towards companies like Nestle who hoards water (click this for a link to an investigation into this exact thing). The law protects the companies, so the lawyer fit the role of the rook.
Gestalt principles are present in a couple of these. Positive and negative space was a focus for these three pieces. They needed to be visually different via different clothing and props so I focused a lot on making them clearly different but similar in height.
For the King, I spent time creating my fictional company and designing the piece. My intention was to print out something that could feature the logo, but I ended up scrapping that later down the road because of the practicality. Here are some of the logos I made to represent the company (king).
For the Queen, I knew it would be modeled after the Government. I just used an image of the U.S Capitol to build my pieces. The Queen is there to support the King at all costs and is very deadly. Government fits that role perfectly.
With all of my pieces finalized, I created some test cuts. Then the scheduling problems hit. I wasn’t able to test cut any of these until the day before the project was due. During that time, I made sure every file and piece is exactly to my liking. I also made a crucial mistake which made it much harder to switch away from chipboard as my main material.
This piece is an earlier model of the Lawyer. It has no slice form marks for the arms. I made the mistake of finalizing everything and then combining the exact width and length of the slices for each part into the shapes themselves. This meant I had to do a lot of extra work whether it be redrawing everything to their exact measurements for a different material (a new material I didn’t have an abundance of) or I had to go through and combine these shapes with, for example, a square to re-seal and then re-implement the correct marks as their own shape.
Thanks to the hardworking instructors in the program, they managed to get everybody onto the machine. I rewrote my concept statement and made these shortcomings work to the advantage of my narrative and approached it with optimism. This is where production starts.
Concept/Narrative Statement
The game of chess is a battle between players through a medium that feels sophisticated while managing to remain just a game. It paints a story far more discomforting, however: warfare and the destruction of either the light or dark side. What Brodie and I have done is examine the subtext of Chess and created our own battle and story to tell. The battle that ensues centers around Capitalism and its conquering of the Natural World. The capitalist side consists of a company called ForNature (King), the Government (Queen), The Lawyer (Rook), The Banker (Bishop), The Landlord (Knight), and The Consumer (Pawn). The blandness and flat artificial nature of the Capitalism side aid in exhibiting the nature of those pieces. Scale and creating a notable hierarchy were crucial in reflecting the reality of a capitalist society where the average consumer is much smaller and more disposable than a Company and the Government that reigns. On the side of nature, hierarchy with scale is also demonstrated but what you also find is a brighter and more texture-filled naturalistic style that reflects that of nature. Those pieces are The Redwood (King), The Rose (Queen), The Hive (Knight), The Cactus (Rook), The Flytrap (Bishop), and The Daisy (Pawn). The battle between Capitalism and the Natural World wages on currently, and we chose this narrative as a modern take on the classicism of the medieval narrative present in Chess as we know it.
Production
I finalized everything and made sure it all looks the way I want it to. I made sure my files were all laser-cut ready and I sent them to an instructor (Taylor) to have him put them on the computer so when I showed up I just had to press “go”. Some small things changed like how many windows the little buildings have and such. I tried to reduce the amount of finer stuff the laser cutter would have to deal with and also reduced the number of things like arms and accessories/props.
The laser cutter didn’t make it through a majority. I had already scrapped my colors due to them simply being more stuff I have to cut out and without the precision of the cutter, it would take forever by hand. I felt like things were only getting worse with this project. I kept a positive attitude though, and immediately began hand cutting them out.
After 8 hours of cutting these out with an Exacto knife, I sanded away some of the torn bits. Most of the pieces had their backs torn off and looked very rough even with sanding.
A lot of pieces had spots like in the image above. I kept going and lined all of my pieces up on a table and began piecing them together.
I cut out the slips for the buildings and put the props in the arms of the pieces. The removal process for these pieces was a nightmare and made some arms and various other parts not fit together by the millimeter, so I glued them.
Final Production
