Research

We started this project out in class by looking through the history of chess and researching how each respective piece of the game was evolved over time. We then got together in our groups and brainstormed ideas out to determine a theme on which to base our chess pieces. My group was in a unique situation, as there were three of us, so we had to find a point of collaboration between three viewpoints instead of two. Among our first ideas were the three original Star Wars trilogy; the three main Columbus cities of Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati; Harry Potter theme of muggles, death eaters, and wizards, and Greek Gods theme of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades.  We decided to go with the Greek Gods theme, because all three of us had some background with it and enjoyed mythology. I took a mythology class last semester, so I was already very familiar with ideas I could use and when we settled on each. The God I selected was Poseidon due to my affinity for the sea, and I had a concept of how his story could influence the pieces. We all got together after some research and decided we wanted all of our respecting pieces to have a correlation of similar roles, i.e. the Queen piece for each would be the God’s weapon of choice.

Iterations

I started my iterations out by sketching out my ideas to get an idea on how they would look. I first wanted my pieces to look somewhat realistic and to have them all have a similar base.

Once I was done sketching I then took my ideas and made them in Illustrator. 

Once they were cut I realized that my pieces were way too realistic and it did not transition well to when assembled. Another issue I had was the sizing was completely off and there was no real order to anything. I went back to the drawing board to completely redesign some pieces and resize all of them.

 

Concept Statement

Our trio of chess sets is based on the three main gods of Greek mythology and the power struggle between the three of them. Alex had Zeus, god of the sky; Sarah had Hades, god of the underworld; and I took Poseidon, god of the sea. To create a sense of unity we all used the god themself as the King and their weapon of choice to be Queen. For Poseidon, I used his trident for the Queen, as that is his main weapon of choice. For the bishop, I choose to use Orion, a son of Poseidon, who could walk on the waves, although he was placed in the stars after his death. That relates that a piece that is confined to a specific color on the board. For the knight, I choose Pegasus to play on the natural connection of it being a horse. I also related with the knight being able to jump and the wings of a Pegasus. For the rook, I went with Atlas, also a son of Poseidon, since the rook as a castle is historically a depiction of strength, and I related to Atlas’s strength of ethics. The last piece was the pawns, which I choose to represent as dolphins. In some myths, Poseidon has a fleet of dolphins. I also felt a dolphin could accurately depict the pawn’s ability to become Queens upon reaching the other side of the board because of their intelligence. I based all the foundations of my pieces on the traditional mounts seen on chess boards. I used bristol to construct my pieces and glued them down to the base piece using rubber cement. Each piece was cut using Sarah’s Cricut machine.

 

Production

My production of the pieces was rather simple, I built the final silhouettes in Illustrator and was lucky to have Sarah cut them using her Cricut machine. Each piece was designed with slots that met in the middle so they could slide into one another. On the bottom of each piece, there were tabs that were folded into a base plate and sealed by gluing another plate on top of them.

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