Rohit Suresh
Chess Piece: The King
Theme: The Godfather
My third assignment is to design and 3D print a King or Queen for the University chessboard. Through some exploration around my mood board, I decided that the theme of my chess piece will be the Godfather.
From looking at a variety of concepts and ideas for designing the chess piece, I narrowed it down to 3 symbols from the Godfather, and 3 concepts.
I sketched out some ideas for a King chess piece, throwing together ideas from adding a cross, bow tie, and suit, to looking at the structure, detail and appearance. Towards my development of the final design, I took inspiration from a simple chess piece base.
Looking at the symbols from the Godfather, in my final design, I used a conical shape as the body of the chess piece, with the bow tie coming out of the suit for detail. The reference to the Godfather through how Marlon Brando (Vito Corleone) wore his suit. Because Vito Corleone is Roman Catholic, I also thought using the symbol of a cross meant something.
Similar to a normal King chess piece, the Godfather King chess piece also has a cross on the head. So with some thought, I pieced together these 6 ideas and ended up with the final sketch.
Evaluation of Final Design
As a casual chess player, I have seen a variation of different kinds of King chess pieces. The Godfather has been a movie that only began to inspire last year after writing several essays on the film. So when I found out that we will be taking inspiration from a film to Design a chess piece, I instantly thought of the Godfather. Sort of in relation to the mafia, Vito Corleone the Don, sends forth his goons to do his dirty work, like the pawns, knights, etc, on a chess board.
