Visuals

These are my Michigan-inspired chess pieces.

These are my partner and I’s chess pieces, displayed together on a clear acrylic chessboard.

This is my favorite piece that I made. It’s my queen piece, representative of Michigan’s wolverine.

Project Statement

This project collaboratively explored the idea of narrative through the redesign of traditional chess pieces. For our narrative redesign, we chose the rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan. As students, we both thought that this idea was very relatable to the original rivalry within chess and would allow us to create visually interesting pieces. Although I’m a proud Ohio State fan, I chose to design the sixteen-piece set that was inspired by the state up north. My pieces are as listed; foam fingers for pawns, megaphones for bishops, block M’s for rooks, football helmets for knights, wolverine for the queen, and lastly, a big house for the king. My partner and I’s pieces are both focused on the football aspect of the rivalry and were chosen carefully based on their movement and rank of importance. We first created our pieces digitally on Illustrator and then used a laser cutter to cut them on wood. This entire process was done in the hopes of visually representing the iconic Ohio State versus Michigan rivalry in a way that hadn’t been seen before and could be related to football fans and chess players alike.

Process

View detailed project process at Checkmate: Process

Reflection

Although this project was time-consuming and contained more material risks than any other project I’ve done this year, it was one of my favorites. Even though I’m an OSU fan, I had a lot of fun creating the Michigan pieces. It was definitely a learning process, as neither I nor my partner had ever created slice forms or worked with birch wood before. We worked simultaneously the entire time, however, and this really helped with communication, resolving whatever issues came up, and making sure our pieces were cohesive as a set. If I had more time and materials, I probably would’ve recut the block M and megaphone because they look burnt when compared to the other pieces. I tried to fix this with paint but it didn’t do that great of a job covering it so I would’ve loved to just redo them. Beyond that, I think all of our pieces came out really well and are something I’m proud to say I helped create.