Chessing Around

 Well, it's time to tackle the chess set and the first step is ideation. I like to start with a mindmap or at least some concept categories, so that's exactly what I did. I started off pretty run of the mill, but after re-reading the assignment I remembered Bryan's admonishment - keep it weird. So ... I picked a concept that had a lot of meat but wasn't toooo weird and started with that one to have a backup plan.

Beings from Cree stories

My ethnic background is full of stories about non-human beings. It's kinda a safe bet because it's very familiar to me, and there's lots of alternatives to choose from if I need to. But I really love a specific story that tells about the dangers of laughing at other's misfortunes so, I also did a chess set based on the story of the man who was devoured by rabbits. 

The story of the man devoured by rabbits

There's a couple of things I really appreciate there - it's a great story. The chess pieces encapsulate that - it's kinda ridiculous but the rabbits just keep coming! There's probably a way to set them up to make them easier to distinguish from each other than just numbers, but this is just a rough first pass. In chess, when the king is taken, the game is over. Here, when the hunter is overwhelmed and can't escape the rabbits, he is devoured. The queen is a group of rabbits demonstrating their success in human-devouring. I also would set up the models to allow for strands of red beads to be added, and that would help distinguish between the pieces. The beads would nicely emulate blood, and give a little movement. I like the idea of setting up rabbit models and flowing them along curves as well. 

Dinosaurs

I really struggled learning to read, but dinosaur books were a huge motivation for me, and some of my fondest early reading memories are of paleontology books (imagine my dismay when I found out most paleontologists are consigned to museum life, waiting for the old fossil above them to die off :(). The first colour comic I self-published was about dinosaurs in space. Why shouldn't the first chest set I design be fantastical dinosaurs?

This idea places the dinosaurs in the traditional chess roles, peasant, soldier, knight, religious figure and royalty. The king is the queen's nest with a removable egg, to signify losing the game. I chose native dinosaurs, from the cretaceous, who are also named for local places. I would plan to keep them fairly geometric, not super rendered, cute and cartoony - simplified. This would allow for them to be feasible in the time frame given. 

Now that I've spoken about dinosaurs and dyslexia....my brain is already spinning off onto a librarian dinosaur series.... either way, these figure would take advantage of the ability to create hollow spire-like twisted forms to create patterning for the higher-ranking pieces and reduce both weight and plastic usage. 

While I haven't chosen yet, I look forward to seeing which one really sticks with me, because that will likely be the winner.