Chessboard
This project is based on a reel I saw once on Instagram. There, a woman was making cats as chess pieces out of clay. I saw it a long time ago, so all I took was the idea to make cat chess.
Just making cats as pieces didn't make sense to me because there is a horse piece and I couldn't just transform a cat into a horse. Option one was to put the cat on the horse but that would make this one piece way too different from the rest. That's when the hats idea came in. The concept is cats playing dress up as chess pieces. That’s why I added small things like strings on the king’s crown or a button on the bishop’s hat, I wanted them to look functional.
Final render, white pieces
Concept of each piece was drawn by me in Procreate. I really liked the picture with hats, so the whole idea is cats playing dress up
Some progress
Finished models lineup. It took me some time to figure out how to make the hats look interesting(so not white and black) but not too complicated, so potential players would easily tell the figures apart
I thought it would be cute to put cats as players, so I made a quick drawing in Procreate
Another final render
Black pieces