Checkmate: Process

Research

I was put in the group of three, and we began researching by thinking of the board and what it looked like. I felt that it was more difficult to come up with an idea because it could not be a simple answer of two contrasting ideas, so we were researching famous trios and categories that had three strong subjects.

Exercises

Here I practiced making 3D forms with slits to create a cube, cone, sphere, and a car.

An exercise we tried was having two people create a form not telling the other how they were going to approach it and see if we could get it to fit.

Then we tried a harder form that we approached differently and gave both of us new ideas of how to make objects

Chess and Board Research

After receiving our board, we noted that the board looked like some tech, a 3-D cube, and illusion. Our top ideas are written down and some other ideas that I had that I thought were interesting

I then found this description from Madhu Dath, describing what the chess pieces represent in battle including why they move the way they do.

Concept Statement

This chest board and it’s pieces were inspired by disco looking board which inspired the idea of a school dance and the cliques in high school, and how they all show up to school as a group and mix together overtime throughout the school day and at a school dance. The kings are created to be something that the other two groups are jealous of and would want from the other. Each group was created with pieces that tailor toward their stereotypes. For the Jocks they are protecting their King, the trophy, since it is the most important thing to them and is desired by the other two groups.

KING: We wanted to make the king something desirable to the other groups and is most valuable to the Jocks so I came up with a trophy.

QUEEN: The movement of the queen in chess is very fast and aggressive and can move in any direction, so the Cleat made perfect sense.

BISHOP: I used a protein shaker cup because of the movement of the bishops and how shaker cups are always moving diagonally when shaking them.

KNIGHT: It took a while to find the right piece for the knight but when i researched and found the post about how knights are used in a battle it stated that they attack with a sword and only attack from the side. I then related the sword and the motion of hitting something from the side to a baseball bat.

ROOK: The point of the rook in chess is to block and protect and the pieces usually are used best to sneak through gaps to steal a piece. I couldn’t think of a better blocking piece then a football helmet, similar to certain football positions.

PAWN: I thought of how abundant pawns were and the movement to come up with dumbbell weights. In a weight lifting room there’s always a large abundance of weights and I order to gain muscle the weights must be lifted, going up, which represents the rule that pawns can only rise on the board.

Iterations

The three of us decided to go with the Jocks, Nerds and Skaters, we originally wanted to do stoners but decided it was not appropriate. I used the explanation of how the characters would be used in battle to come up with my pieces and help one of my group mates come up with theirs.

Because we were put in a group of three, we were given a difficult board. We had to figure out how to fit all of the pieces on the squares that varied in size unlike other boards. We also wanted to make them increase in height as they got to the larger squares in the middle

Then we used these boxes when sizing the pieces to make sure they fit the height we wanted and width of the boxes on the board for each piece.

I then proceeded to work on my pieces and find how I wanted to make them 3D forms using multiple cut out shapes. Most pieces ended up changing to be simplified.

I created a shape that followed a line that flows through to the front like a real helmet. I created all these lines to make sure I could show that continuous line when they are in place. I ended up taking the top face guard out since the slit for it would not be able to hold the piece in the test piece.

I learned after the trophy test that the bat would have been too top heavy as well. Like the trophy I took out unnecessary pieces, which i also did for cleat and the shaker cup. But for the bat I had to also add a stand to keep it up to show the diagonal movement of the knight.

Another change to the cleat i had to make was giving it an extra horizontal support to keep the piece propped up. I used a sharp shape to show the swiftness and danger of the queen piece.

Here is the first iteration of the pawn piece, where the stand to hold it up was much too small and week but I made it that way so that I could fit one of the plates for the weight on the bottom

Here you can see the change to the bottom plate where I had to get rid of the plate and replaced it with a stand that would be the same size and shape of the weight it replaced.

We also iterated with different materials such as Bristol paper, chipboard and finally ended on a white plastic material that was firm and made the pieces sturdier. We were worried that with using the other options that they would rip when being cut out using the cricut.

Production

Some of the final deliverables were taking away shapes that were unnecessary to simplify the pieces and for some to make them less top heave to help with sturdiness and stability. I also changed the bottom shapes and stands of some to better fit the object ad help with stability. The last deliverable was adding red to the pieces since the red it a more energetic and aggressive color, where as the others were blue and green. The colors are subtle but are applied in a way to make sure that you can tell the pieces apart when playing the game. Things I felt that I executed well are how I made the basic shapes into forms and are able to be identified in other viewpoints other than just the straight on silhouette view. I learned that not everything will go to plan when cutting things and transferring over files sometimes doesn’t work. In my case I could not figure out how to cut out my pieces because whatever I did my files would never transfer over the right way which cause many setbacks and made me have to use the laser cutter which took a while to so what figure out and ended up making burns on the other side and there was nothing that could be done about it. I could improve upon making the pieces even more stable and make them more complex having the secondary shapes be connected to a tertiary shape but because of set backs I did not have time to test and iterate more complex pieces. I also could have thought of different ways to put the pieces together to make them more clean.

Link to Portfolio

Chess Redesign