Designed as part of my 3D Design class at William Paterson University during my freshman year at age 18 — students in the class were tasked to digitally and physically design and construct a chess set from something that peaked their interest. Struggling to come up with ideas, I originally sketched ideas of the world's tallest buildings and my favorite cartoon characters, but then the lightbulb hit and I thought that I could design a chess set based on the biggest thing happening in the world at the time in the Fall of 2020: the COVID-19 Pandemic.
To begin the project, I created sketches of what I wanted the set to look like, what the pieces would resemble, and a plan on how I would digitally design it and physically construct it. Displayed below are very rough sketches of my concept for my chess set, sketched in September of 2020.
Following the sketches, I immediatly chose the pandemic as my theme. I began designing and rendering the pieces for the chess set in a 3D modeling software called Maya, by Autodesk. It was definitely a learning curve to become proficient in the software as I had never used a 3D modeling software as advanced as Maya before. I previously used Blender, but Maya was a huge step up due to its advanced settings, features, and capabilities. After creating some concept pieces in Maya, it was time to send them to William Paterson University's state of the art 3D printing lab with Makerbot Replicator 5+ printers, in the Cheng Library.
After finalizing the renderings and going through the trial and error of figuring out the dimensions, infill densities, and rafts/support features for the pieces, I finally printed out all 32 pieces to be played on a 16x16 inch board. Next up, it was time to construct the set over a two month process using a Makita table saw, chop (mitre) saw, vice grips (clamps), Rust-o-leum spray paints, custom stickers, multiple polyurethane coats and then a finished product.
The final product had finally come to life and it came out great after three full months of work from designing, constructing, painting, and everything in between. While I know not everyone wants to be reminded of the detriments caused by the pandemic, the goal of this chess set was to create a product in 2020 that could give people some humor and hope during the peak of the pandemic in mid to late 2020. This project successfully demonstrates my basic knowledge of woodworking, graphic/product design, and 3D rendering software skills. As featured on NJ.com, Daily Record, WPU News, and 3DPrint.com.
