The Sentinel Chess Set was born out of the frustration of
not being able to complete the computer game of the same name. After all, there
were 10,000 levels to negotiate! The game was written by Geoff Crammond and was
his follow up to the motor racing game, REVS. The idea behind this ingenious
three dimensional game was to absorb trees around the landscape, turn them into
boulders, transport your self as a robot figure to a high enough vantage point
in the landscape to be able to see the base that the Sentinel was standing on.
Absord his energy and the game was won. If however, he saw you, your energy
would be absorbed back into the landscape. Sounds complicated I know but a lot
of fun.
I noticed that there were enough characters in the game to stand in for the
pieces in a game of chess. The computer game allowed the player to freeze the
action so during these paused periods I would take a sheet of tracing paper and
trace each figure, methodically transporting myself to a different part of the
landscape and so to a different view of the figure, pause again and draw
another elevation. Eventually I had enough drawings to enable me to work out
how large the pieces would be in relation to each other and actual size. I
carved each figure from Milliput, made a two part rubber mould and cast them in
resin with a filler powder. The pieces were painted to match the colour of the
figures that could be found in two of the landscapes and finally matt
varnished. The board was made from resin squares with pigment added to match
the playing area of the final world. I did have a problem with the knight
though. The body part was so narrow that the resin wouldn't fill the mould
proper ly. After trying to blow it down to the bottom most part of the mould
with a straw and suffering resin blowback into my face, I decided to inject it
using a syringe, by far a better method.
The whole project took me around six months to complete. Geoff Crammond came
over to see it and was suitably impressed. I even presented him with a pewter
version of the robot, the character which takes the place of the Queen in my
chess set.